TV Overnights: EastEnders once again defeated by rival soaps…and Doc Martin
Monday night offered viewers a chance to overdose on soap frothiness, as the start of a new week saw all of the nation’s favourite soaps compete for some valuable attention.
Emmerdale got the ball rolling at 7pm as Debbie Dingle got her home rigged out with all the latest surveillance equipment for free. The only catch was that she had to turn nark and strike up a deal with the most irritating police detective in television history.
An impressively high 7.3 million viewers turned in for half an hour of rural charm, topped off with a bit of homicidal fun. An audience share of 36% watched as her boyfriend Cameron didn’t confess to any crime, but proposed to Debbie instead – as is the unpredictable nature of soap characters.
EastEnders (8pm) was up over on BBC One an hour later as reformed toddler-swapper Ronnie Mitchell faced her worst nightmare as she was forced to look at her biggest fear head on. A series of coincidences left the recently released jailbird stuck with ill baby Lexi, pulling in an audience of just 7 million viewers.
An audience share of 30% watched as the glamorous convict didn’t trade Lexi in for a tatty dress at the market, resulting in yet another defeat for EastEnders at the hands of ITV’s offerings.
Needless to say, a double helping of Coronation Street built upon Emmerdale‘s success and netted the day’s top two audiences. At 7:30pm 8.7 million viewers (a 40% share) watched as Stella caved into the Monday pressures and decided to get hammered behind the bar of the Rovers. Mind you, if Dev was sitting there all night staring at you mournfully it’s amazing she didn’t hit something a little harder.
An hour later and the feverish fans of the cobbles had diminished ever so slightly, with 8.5 million coming back to see Dev tone it down for a moment to deliver an almost sensitive and forgiving monologue to the Rover’s drunken spouse of the Sunita-slayer. The reconciliation netted a 36% share for the channel.
The 9pm slot was a mixed offering of drama, business, ‘reality’ and the just plain staged. ITV’s insanely popular twee Martin Clunes vehicle, Doc Martin simply destroyed the competition – it must be like The X Factor for over 25s, or something.
The long awaited sixth series continued with the usual array of rural genteel happenings, grumpy mumblings from the Doc himself and more kooky characters than you could fit in a blending machine.
Last night’s powerhouse storyline had the strength to attract a mind blowing 7.2 million viewers, which saw legendary mainstay actress Eileen Atkins get some hot and sticky action from a tramp. This week’s slice of the comfortable and familiar netted a 32% share and beat EastEnders for a third week in a row, in a race to be the third most watched show of the day.
Over on BBC Two, the broadcaster’s manically gesticulating business editor wrapped up his intellectual shopping trip, with the third and final episode detailing how the internet killed off the British high street.
Robert Preston Goes Shopping (9pm) basically detailed how we are all to blame for the state of the current economy – all because we order that CD from Play.com instead of visiting your local family-run music dispensary. 1.3 million viewers watched the informative and captivating guide through the changing psychology of the consumer.
At the same time on BBC One, forgettable schedule filler Motorway Cops filled the schedule for an hour, netting 2.7 million viewers.
Though the words reality and television have never really been honest bedfellows, there is no sign of the cheap genre slowing down – with Channel 4 now deeming a low grade fast food shop as a microcosm of modern life.
The Fried Chicken Shop (Channel 4, 9pm), saw ‘members of the public’ wander in – armed with a hunger for laboratory processed chicken and an easy to digest backstory – and ponder the meaning of life, all under the glare of those fly on the wall cameras that are all the rage nowadays.
1.1 million viewers watched a string of barely comprehensible youngsters come in, order a chicken and blazingly pitch themselves for reality TV stardom. The depressing proceedings caught a 5% share but was the most tweeted about show of the day, generating 897 tweets per minutes.
Over on Channel 5, Celebrity Super-Spa (9pm) took the reality format to its dark and deepest levels of the human soul and starred something called Helen Flanagan and an Arg. Just 507,000 viewers (a 2% share) tuned in to see a number of oxygen starved celebrities do very little for our viewing pleasure.
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).