TV Overnights: The Voice UK catches a break and pulls in Sunday’s biggest audience
Since the middle of April Britain’s Got Talent has been rallying up viewers in a hyperbole of flashing lights and an unjustified sense of occasion, so it’s no wonder then that the semi-finals littered over the weekend brought in impressive audiences for ITV.
Overshadowing everything in its reach (apart from the indestructible titan that is Coronation Street, obviously), Friday’s extravaganza of emotionally damaged children brought in 8.4 million viewers.
On Saturday, a tiny percentage of the potential audience were distracted by the giant yellow ball in the sky and the show was down to 8.1 million, but enough to defeat limping rival The Voice UK which was watched by 5.7 million people.
After being constantly trounced by Cowell’s crew of chancers, the much more annoying assembly that makes up The Voice UK‘s judging panel must have last night breathed a sigh of relief. Sunday night saw the four judges struggle to whittle their abundance of singing talent down to 12 finalists, without the threat of ITV’s juggernaut lingering in the background.
As it turns out, the BBC’s internationally-franchised twisty-chair show wasn’t in direct competition with BGT at all – turns out, it’s simply just not as well liked. With no rival to cower behind as an excuse, The Voice UK (BBC One, 7:15pm) still only managed to secure an audience of 5.6 million viewers.
This meant an audience share of 27% tuned in to watch Tom Jones feign as much interest as he possibly could. Winter Fuel Payment handouts can only get you so much spray tan. Despite the unseasonal sunny weather dragging people out of their living rooms, The Voice UK was yesterday’s most watched programme. While this seemed like good news, it was also the current series’ lowest rating episode.
ITV rolled out Live International Football at 7:30pm, which gave the BBC a run for its (publicly funded) money. Adrian Chiles put the kettle on and invited viewers in for half an hour of catch up, with the game between England and Brazil kicking off at 8pm.
The game had an uneventful first half but somehow managed to peak at 7.2 million viewers half an hour in. An average audience of 5.4 million viewers watched the entire three hour event as Rooney and Jones helped England get to a 2-2 draw. An audience share of 24% watched the whole game, which included Brazil’s Hulk being handed a yellow card 63 minutes in (which probably made him very angry).
It wouldn’t be Sunday night without a few mysterious cadavers lying about and thankfully BBC One provided viewers’ murder fix at 9pm as the second series of Case Histories (9pm) was wrapped up in clear plastic.
The third and final episode saw Jason Isaacs’ broody detective (there is no other kind) mix his usual dealings with murdered corpses with real live women. The crime fighter’s romantic encounters attracted an audience of 3.7 million viewers and a 16% share.
Similarly, lucky so-and-so Simon Reeve brought us the third and final episode of his travelogue Australia with Simon Reeve (BBC Two, 9pm) as last bight saw the presenter’s tremendous adventure pedestrian wandering come to a close. 2.4 million viewers watched as Simon travelled to Melbourne, complained that Australians are the worst polluters on the planet and then constantly appeared in cars, helicopters and planes for the rest of the episode.
Channel 4’s offering was a little more bizarre with Rob Marshall’s Nine at 9pm. The cinematic adaption of the musical no one called out for featured a suspiciously impressive cast – Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Dame Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard and Penélope Cruz who all showed up and performed as if it were some sort of probation programme.
The poorly executed experience captured 384,000 for the channel, resulting in a measly 2% share.
Meanwhile, in the dark alternate universe that is Twitter, The Only Way is Marbs (ITV 2, 10pm) generated the most tweets per minutes of the day despite only grabbing 1 million viewers.
Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks and key multi-channel stations.