Doc Martin’s confounding popularity continues on ITV
It’s been a very successful few days for commercial broadcaster ITV, as its latest raft of reality contests and returning dramas had enough to overshadow similar BBC offerings.
The start of a fresh week saw the trend continue as cantankerous small town general practitioner Doc Martin (ITV, 9pm) somehow managed to attract another stellar audience.
The longstanding success of ITV’s harmless show about life in a picturesque Cornish town must lie in the characterisation of its eponymous character. Doc Martin is basically an amalgamation of two Disney characters – a little sprinkling of the personality of Snow White’s vertically challenged friend Grumpy, mixed in with a heavy dose of Quasimodo’s visual appearance.
The sixth series of the community-based show has been performing very well indeed, especially for a show that started out over nine years ago. Perhaps less is more. Keeping avid Doc Martin fans (they must exist) on a rationed supply over such a long period helped last night’s fun – which saw the dour doctor attempt to bond with a son he clearly despises – attract an audience of 7.3 million viewers.
The significant success saw the incurably pessimistic healer easily walk away with the 9pm slot, resulting in a 33% share. The only thing that even came close was BBC One’s very own version of Crash, Bang, Wallop, What a Video! – Motorway Cops (9pm). 2.8 million viewers watched the fly on the windshield highway mayhem, securing a 12% share.
Over on Channel 4, The Fried Chicken Shop (9pm) once again opened its door to deliver low quality, high fat protein to the aimless people of Clapham. A platform for the terminally vain and a level of confidence that only full-on delusion can bring, the show has been attracting modest viewing figures but is all the rage on Twitter it would seem.
Only 1 million people tuned in for the lab grown, genetically altered goodness, yet the show generated 1,143 tweets per minute – the highest number for any UK TV show of the day.
Earlier at 8pm, Countrywise – a magazine programme with a very similar format to BBC One super hit Countryfile (but legally speaking, nothing like it at all) – saw Ben Fogle attempt to keep some love starved famers company and was watched by 3.3 million viewers.
Doing slightly better was EastEnders (8pm) over on BBC One. Monday’s adventures in the BBC’s alternative universe version of London’s East End saw tired old soak Lauren Branning secure a cleaning job the Queen Vic (score!), giving her easy access to neglected half empty vessels of alcohol. 7.1 million viewers tuned in for the minesweeping excitement, resulting in a 32% share.
Unfortunately for the good folk of Albert Square, Emmerdale (8pm) aired an hour earlier on ITV and had already secured a bigger audience. Monday’s episode saw Cameron, the village hunk with a taste for human slaughter, face the music in court and was watched by 7.1 million viewers and a 36% share.
While the nation’s two lesser soaps battled it out for third place, Coronation Street (ITV) once again waltzed away with the day’s top two spots with relative ease. The first visit to the cobbles at 7:30pm saw Stella finally comprehend that the great storyline god in the sky really, really has it in for her.
The slow, yet significant, realisation saw the Rover’s land lady form an escape plan in her head before another new show runner steps in and drops a runaway tram on her. 8.7 million viewers caught up with the first slice of standard working class life (hmmmm), with the audience falling to 8.3 million for the second half at 8:30pm.
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).