Bianca’s rare good day sees EastEnders claw back to the top
In a change to EastEnders‘ regular output, Tuesday night saw the writers finally allow the dark clouds to part over Walford for just a short while, permitting a singular ray of light to shine upon misery incarnate, Bianca Jackson.
After twenty long years of desolation and heartbreak the chronically trodden upon character returned from a few weeks away in sunny Manchester with a new man on her arm, who in his first half an hour had refrained from destroying her life. So far, so good.
The shocking change in tone might have been too much of a shock for some viewers, with the disconcertingly happy faces only appearing a few days after the square’s latest murder/frame plot.
7.1 million hardcore viewers refused to ease themselves into the cheerful storyline, instead going cold turkey on the expected despair just to get a taste of their usual fix.
The impressive audience meant that EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm) was the most watched show of the entire day, with the rare glimmer of happiness helping secure a 33% share.
News that the Walford soap has been getting its groove back in the past week can only mean bad news for ITV’s Emmerdale (7pm). After repeatedly beating the BBC One soap all summer long, the watery murder of psychotic bad boy Cameron and his twisted storylines has seen the rural soap’s popularity deflate just enough to matter.
6.4 million viewers tuned in to see the bonfire night celebrations lead to some paternal secrets being uncovered, securing the day’s second biggest audience and a 31% share.
Straight up afterwards on ITV was the latest Live UEFA Champions League (7:30pm) all the way from Spain’s Anoeta Stadium. The face-off between Real Sociedad and Manchester United kicked off at 8pm with the thrilling match keeping viewers on the edge of their seats with precisely zero goals scored.
3.9 million viewers tuned in for the entire two and a half hour running time, with the audience peaking in the final moments to 5 million viewers. An average audience share of 18% watched as Manchester United managed to stay on top of their group with a strong offence.
At 8pm the drama of Holby City on BBC One battled with Channel 4’s Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners and won. The neverending medical soap attracted a sturdy base of 4.6 million viewers and an 18% share. At the same time Channel 4’s latest piece of light entertainment based around a mental disorder secured the channel’s biggest audience with 1.9 million viewers and a 6% share.
BBC Two brought in 2.9 million viewers with the latest round of MasterChef: The Professionals (8pm) but moved onto the dizzying culinary heights in the prime time position.
Iceland Foods: Life in the Freezer Cabinet (9pm) was the third and final bizarre piece of retail propaganda from the BBC and detailed founder Malcolm Walker’s desperate attempts to gain some good PR after the horsemeat scandal (of which this show is no doubt part of). 2.2 million viewers watched as Walker went on a charm offensive, netting a 10% share.
For the second week in a row Tuesday’s prime time slot belonged to thriller The Escape Artist (9pm) on BBC One. The David Tennant fronted drama – the type of show that gets great pleasure in destroying the smug protagonist’s perfect existence – saw a 10% drop in viewers from last week’s opening episode.
4.1 million viewers watched as Tennant struggled to protect his family while secretly attempting to convict the serial killer that threatened them, securing an 18% share and – despite the drop – easily securing the 9pm slot.
Over on Channel 4, viewers were treated to ‘a very special episode’ of Embarrassing Bodies (9pm) – one that focused on Eric, a man who lost half his face to cancer.
As usual, Doctor creepy himself, Christian Jessen, haunted nearly every shot as he attempted to fool viewers into thinking he was reconstructing the patient’s face single handedly. 1.4 million viewers followed Eric’s journey to down the aisle, netting a 6% share.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the depths of the internet Bianca’s cheerful return was also getting noticed on Twitter. Eastenders was the second most tweeted about show of the day, generating 7,400 tweets.
This was only behind Hollyoaks at 7pm on E4. Despite the fact that the show pulled in significantly less viewers than EastEnders (692,000 in total), the Chester-set soap was tweeted about 20,987 times.
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.