TV Viewing Summary W/E 15/11/98

Victoria Wood’s decision to move out from stand-up to situation comedy appears to have paid off handsomely. Dinner Ladies featured the usual Wood suspects (Julie Walters, Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston) and, despite some negative reviews in the media, was watched by 12.24 million viewers. The BBC’s other big new comedy show of the week, Big Train, has also got off to an impressive start with 3.21 million people watching the first episode.

Meanwhile over on Channel 4 it was another five night week for Brookside, or, as it should be retitled, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Video Spin Off, which focused on the build up to Peter and Lindsay’s wedding. This time around Channel 4 have taken a leaf out of Channel 5’s Family Affairs book and decided to show each night’s episode three times, this had the effect of boosting combined audience figures to nearly six million. Based on single showings however, the best figure that any episode could achieve was during Monday’s edition which drew 3.55 million viewers.

ITV’s screening of one of Prince Charles’ many birthday parties, Royal Birthday Celebration, performed pretty well despite being scheduled against Casualty over on 1. The low point of the show would probably have to be Geri Halliwell’s cat wail version of Happy Birthday, but despite this it still managed to pull in 8.54 million viewers.

Biggest disappointment of the week would have to be the poor showing of ITV’s new drama series Cold Feet. Despite the fact that the pilot won several awards and the series has been heavily promoted, the first episode could only attract 7.47 million viewers and only beat BBC1’s flop costume drama Vanity Fair by 600,000 people.

Reviewer: Simon Wright

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