BBC One’s Ripper Street slays the 9pm competition
The nation’s favourite soaps took top honours on Monday evening, seducing weary viewsers with a foamy concoction of unseasonal tans and convoluted storylines.
A double helping of Coronation Street took the night’s top two spots with 8.8 million people tuning in at 7:30pm to see the aftermath of the epic Tina-smashes-Tracey’s-window plot. The second episode at 8:30pm performed almost as well with an audience of 8 million viewers.
The battle for third place saw Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) attract 7.3 million viewers, pushing past Janine’s extremely depressing birthday – even for EastEnders‘ grim standards. 7 million viewers tuned in at 8pm to see Walford’s Queen of emotional desolation chuck an entire plus-sized chocolate cake into a slim domestic-sized dustbin with help from some clever camera angles, netting a 30% share.
Straight up afterwards, broadcasting legend Joan Bakewell was getting her knickers in a right old twist about a disease of apathy that’s sweeping the nation. Although you might have thought evil litterbugs were wiped out decades ago, Our Dirty Nation – Panorama (BBC One, 8:30pm) reminded us that the epidemic is still in full swing.
3 million viewers watched Bakewell release the full might of her fury by convincing Camden Council to not clean up one side of a street for 24 hours, resulting in a flood of discarded kebabs and a 13% share.
Not content with horrifying sensitive teatime audiences, BBC One was once again courting controversy at 10:35pm as the broadcaster helped former EDL leader Tommy Robinson continue to launch his dazzling new media career.
Quitting the English Defence League: When Tommy Met Mo documented the Luton lad as he attempted to broaden his out look by way of a mind-meld with campaigner Mo Ansar. 1.7 million viewers tuned in for the meeting, resulting in a 15% share and generating 6,130 tweets.
The documentary also revealed for the first time why Robinson quit the organisation he founded – turns out harbingers of extremist activities have very little chance of bagging an appearance on next year’s Strictly Come Dancing.
BBC One’s dark Victorian drama Ripper Street (9pm) made a welcome return to TV screens last night as viewers forgot their Monday woes with a bit of boisterous and gruesome East End fun.
The second series of the unique crime drama saw former Spooks star Matthew Macfadyen attempting to stop a wave of heroin hitting the streets of Whitechapel and Limehouse – with one or two gruesome dismemberments along the way, naturally.
Although the show is uncomfortably similar to ITV’s Whitechapel – which constantly harks back to a grim and gothic past – Ripper Street excels because of the period setting. The dodgy Chinatown dealings of last night’s opening episode attracted just over 5 million viewers, down from the 6 million that watched the first episode in December 2012.
Over on BBC Two, bizarre promotional piece Iceland Foods: Life in the Freezer Cabinet (9pm) wrapped up its short lived run. Possibly the worst – or best – PR decision a company has made, the soft documentary has been showing viewers what life is like in the British supermarket, all the way from the shop floor to founder Malcolm Walker’s plush country estate.
It seems nearly all of the staff that made it on camera were unnaturally happy in their jobs but all of that came under threat with a certain equine-related mishap. Fans of schadenfreude were in for a treat as the third and final episode focused on the fallout from the horsemeat scandal (which, to be fair, Iceland was far from the worst offender).
2.2 million people watched as the ‘kooky’ technical manager Trish was dragged in front of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in parliament for a grilling.
Channel 4 brought us another harrowing hour of real life and death situations in 999: What’s Your Emergency? (9pm). The latest slice of disturbing realism netted 1.2 million viewers and a 6% share.
Meanwhile, ITV dipped its own hands in the exploitive prime time documentary genre with OCD Ward at 9pm. 2.7 million viewers watched as patients with severe cases of obsessive compulsive disorder were filmed for prosperity, securing a 12% share.
At the same time, there was more constructed tabloid fodder from the responsible broadcaster of On Benefits & Proud, as Channel 5 seemed determined to engage viewers by pushing their outrage buttons.
Pickpockets & Proud (9pm) pretty much scraped the bottom of the barrel by convincing self-confessed serial criminals to sign away their anonymity. An audience of 1.4 million watched the feel-good fun.
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.