TV Overnights: Game of Thrones’ Red Wedding sends Twitter into meltdown
What is it with Monday nights and traumatising programming?
Lately, it seems, schedulers have been saving up their harrowing content to kick off the new working week in a disturbing fashion – depressing documentaries about the erosion of society, child murdering fun in Broadchurch, dingy Northern Ireland serial killer drama The Fall and the ultimate horror of Vicious are all recent examples.
Sky Atlantic’s genre-busting epic Game of Thrones (9pm) made sure that last night was no exception. Long-time viewers of EastEnders should have known something malicious was afoot – our heroes gathered together for a dainty wedding and there were even shots of people laughing and having fun. The foreboding was ominously clear.
In a show that has taught viewers not to get too attached to characters, even the main characters, (even the only good guys left), last night’s last minute sucker punch was too much for some to bear, with many turning to Twitter to vent their outrage.
The series three penultimate episode, The Rains of Castamere, generated 761 tweets per minute and topped SecondSync’s leader board, despite a major Twitter outage during peak TV viewing.
The show, which has proven to pull in more viewers through catch up (65% of viewers of April’s series three opener didn’t watch live), was watched by 492,000 viewers and a 2% share.
Turns out, things are pretty grim up north.
Over on BBC Two, The Fall (9pm) seemed positively cheerful and breezy by comparison as Gillian Anderson had the (comparably) enviable task of hunting down a killer. Like Game of Thrones the series is bowing out next week, so the pressure was on for DS Gibson to get her man.
The series has been enough of a surprise success for BBC Two that a second series was recently announced.
For the past few weeks the thriller has been securing the 9pm slot for the channel, with the trick being repeated last night. 3.3 million viewers watched as the cat and mouse game escalated, securing an 11% share.
The final episode of surprise hit Skint went out at 9pm on Channel 4 and dealt with the charming issue of addiction. The ‘documentary’, which claims to give a voice to Britain’s underclass (but ends up coming across like a point-and-laugh Shameless), has proved popular over its four week run, with last night’s finale securing 2.4 million viewers (a 10% share) – Channel 4’s biggest hit of the day.
ITV’s Monday night comedy line-up was also aware of the ticking clock as both sitcoms on offer also reached their second to last episode. While both Vicious (9pm) and The Job Lot (9:30pm) have suffered from viewers disappearing en masse, it was the later that was most affected.
The Job Lot – the fun show about unemployment – started out well with nearly 5 million viewers a few weeks back but was down to 1.8 million last night.
Beforehand, Vicious didn’t suffer quite as badly. 2.5 million viewers watched as Stuart and Freddie invited Ash’s new girlfriend around for a sacrificial offering to the God of Sneer. The latest slice of the stinging sitcom captured an 11% share.
Meanwhile on BBC One, another old queen was hogging all the limelight. The People’s Coronation with David Dimbleby saw the veteran presenter dissect microscopic details of the ground breaking day, which for the first time allowed the general public to gawk at the aristocracy. 2.8 million viewers strolled down memory lane via Westminster Abbey, securing a 12% share.
Earlier on the soaps ruled the day with a trip to picturesque Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) pulling in 6.3 million viewers and a 36% share. The first episode of Coronation Street followed as Dev moped about, emoting in his unique way, as if he had just watched Game of Thrones. The first visit was watched by 8 million viewers, the biggest audience of the day.
Squeezed in between was EastEnders on BBC One at 8pm as poor old Dot had to deal with a loose snake in her home. The shenanigans from Walford were watched by 6.6 million viewers and a 32% share.
Coronation Street‘s second outing of the night didn’t do as well as the first but was still watched by 7.7 million viewers. An audience share of 35% brazed through scenes of Dev getting upset, convincing himself his dead wife Sunita wasn’t a brutal killer. But then, everyone else is on TV these days 🙁
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.
The Social TV Analytics report is a daily leaderboard displaying the latest social TV analytics Twitter data from SecondSync. The table shows the top UK TV shows as they are mentioned on Twitter, which MediaTel has correlated with the BARB overnight programme ratings for those shows (only viewable to BARB subscribers).