8.7m tune in to ITV for Downton Abbey’s latest scandal
Friday evening’s television went perfectly to plan with two predictable outcomes resulting in the battle of the soaps. First up, nobody would have been surprised to see the double serving of Coronation Street on ITV at 7:30pm and 8:30pm take the day’s top two spots, with 7.9 and 7.3 million viewers respectively.
The second soap-related non-surprise of the night came in the form of EastEnders‘ (BBC One, 8pm) now-standard defeat at the hands of Emmerdale (ITV 7pm). There has been very little between the rival soaps in recent months, but ITV’s rural drama has managed to keep those few important steps ahead.
Friday evening saw Emmerdale secure almost 36,00 more viewers, totalling an audience of 6.5 million. 6.2 million viewers decided to kick off their weekend with the never-ending cycle of misery that is life in Albert Square.
With the soaps taking the top four spots, news and light entertainment ruled the rest of the top ten. After many, many years in the business, Graham Norton managed to outdo himself at 10:30pm and conduct one of his most painful interviews as of yet.
The Graham Norton Show (BBC One) saw acting legends Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer hover somewhere between polite and unamused while Cher wished she had the facial dexterity to communicate her horror. 3.7 million viewers watched as it was left to Jennifer Saunders to look as awkward and uncomfortable as the tense situation demanded, resulting in a 25% share.
ITV celebrated its post soap success come-down at 9pm with a prime time visit from cuddly uncle Piers. This week the professional friend of the fabulous invited pop magician Pete Waterman into his ego massaging parlour, generating an audience of 3.5 million.
Saturday’s brand of popular music somehow managed to be slightly more aggressive and gaudy than Waterman’s back catalogue as The X Factor (ITV, 8pm) attempted to provide more drama in two hours than Shakespeare managed in his lifetime.
With more participants balancing aggressive emoting and singing, Saturday’s big budget version of pub karaoke offered more snot fuelled songs than a memorial episode of Glee. Try as they might to tinker with the formula (and surely the last thing the show needed was more soap opera hysterics), The X Factor fell to 7.6 million viewers but still brought in the day’s second biggest audience.
Which meant that it was BBC One’s Saturday night spectacular that locked in the nation’s biggest audience once again. The 11th week of Strictly Come Dancing (6:30pm) brought more of the same but viewers still lapped it up.
The dancing competition – which every week sees the audience and judges act surprised that middle-aged women can dance – knows exactly how to pander to its target audience and it pays off. Strictly Come Dancing managed to secure the week’s biggest audience on Saturday, with a total of 9.7 million viewers tuning in for the roller coaster two hour ride of surprises.
Sunday’s television line-up was a very similar bag of tricks as the results shows saw BBC One’s golden goose drop slightly, while The X Factor‘s mercifully shorter running time proved beneficial.
First up was Strictly Come Dancing: The Results (ITV) at 7:20pm, with Dragon’s Den investor Deborah Meaden getting the boot. 9.6 million viewers tuned in for 40 minutes of procrastination, securing a 38% share.
At 8pm on ITV, Dermot O’Leary got very excited about another hour of The X Factor – even though viewers were mostly treated to repeated clips of the previous night’s show and yet even more sing-offs. Somehow, against all the odds it worked as 8.8 million viewers allowed their their brains just one more hour of auto piloted distracting dramatics before the new week commenced.
At the same time on BBC One, frilly wares and lady-like giggling was the name of the game in The Paradise (8pm). Kind of like Mr Selfridge but without the inane American, the period retail drama saw the haberdashery move into the fireworks business and managed to pull 4.6 million viewers away from the soulless pyrotechnics on ITV.
At 9pm BBC One’s cool and youthful cop drama By Any Means couldn’t escape the shadow cast by the Grantham family. The final episode of the Warren Brown show – which almost certainly had the word ‘gritty’ plastered all over its press pack – secured a 12% share and a little over 3 million viewers.
Despite the general unease being expressed about the fourth series of Downton Abbey (9pm), ITV has been rubbing its hands with glee as the audience has been showing up en masse regardless. Last night saw the stuffy show attempt to widen its potential audience by striking up an interracial romance in 1920s Yorkshire (oh my!). Sunday’s third biggest audience tuned in to see Lady Rose lock lips with a jazz musician.
8.7 million viewers watched as another scandal unfolded in the country estate as Lady Edith only got herself pregnant right before her fella disappeared into thin air. T’would seem Ladies like to court controversy – the very modern goings on attracted a impressive 35% share and generated 14,600 tweets.
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).
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