BBC rocks out with its Cox out
Last night saw Gary Barlow – the living embodiment and ultimate authority on anything ‘rock’ – get a few mates over to the Hammersmith Apollo to further his quest to become an indispensible national treasure while highlighting a worthy cause.
Children in Need Rocks (BBC One, 8pm) brought an eclectic line up of popular musicians of the day under one roof to provide some cheeky rawwwwk on a school night.
Chris Evans and Fearne Cotton were on hand to gush their way through every act, somehow managing to bring in an impressive audience of 4.2 million viewers. This meant that from 8:30pm onwards, BBC One held onto the biggest audience for the rest of the night.
Barry Manilow, Robbie Williams and The Wanted were all on hand to teach the disadvantaged kids of Britain exactly what rock and roll is all about (I think that was the point anyway), with the two hour event attracting a 19% share. Won’t somebody think of the children?
At least over-promoted children’s entertainer Jessie J was given a rare day off by the corporation that seemingly has the rights to her soul.
The concert was the most talked about TV show on Twitter yesterday, generating 84,043 tweets, resulting in 20 tweets for every 1,000 viewers.
Not to be outdone by the country’s most needy musician, Professor Brian Cox decided to throw a bit of a love-in himself. Unfortunately for the quaint spoken Roald Dahl creation, Cox had to share some of the limelight with an attention seeking 1000 year old alien.
An audience made up of celebrities and generally beautiful people joined the Professor and the Doctor for a one off sermon celebrating the creaky science behind the BBC’s long running sci-fi adventure.
2.6 million viewers tuned in for The Science of Doctor Who (BBC Two, 9pm) with intentions of actually being able to follow Cox’s narrative but accepted the inevitable ten minutes in. The lecture on time travel, black holes and aliens pulled in a 12% share.
For a complete change of pace over on Channel 4, the broadcaster was taking another look into the world of mental health in Bedlam (9pm). The third episode of the challenging documentary (does Channel 4 do anything else these days?) looked at the varying success of the care in the community scheme.
980,000 viewers watched last night’s instalment – stories grouped together by the key word ‘psychosis’ – down from the opening episode’s Halloween audience of 1.5 million and resulted in a 5% share.
At the same time on ITV a death rattle could be audibly heard as flashy drama Breathless (9pm) finally ran out of oxygen. After six weeks the 60s-set gynaecological-drama (officially a genre now) came to a close.
The style heavy, substance light show – which has been desperately trying to wedge in some social commentary – started off strong back in October as 3.4 million viewers tuned in for the opening episode. Last night’s finale saw the audience fall to 2.1 million as a misogynistic fundraiser at the hospital pulled all the characters back together, resulting in a 10% share.
Earlier in the afternoon a double helping of Emmerdale (ITV) walked away with the second and third biggest audiences of the night as Amy was finally ready to leave for good. The first episode at 7pm brought in 6.7 million viewers while the second at 8pm fell to 6.4 million.
Wedged in between over on BBC One was Thursday’s big winner, EastEnders (7:30pm). After spending a few months driftless and unloved (a bit like Ian Beale when he transformed into supertramp) the soap seems to be regaining some strength, regularly beating its rural rival.
Last night’s storyline gathered up all the Square’s current roster of ‘hard men’ (Ian Beale included) and dumped them in the middle of an East End wasteland for some good old fashioned violence and intimidation.
7.3 million viewers watched as Phil Mitchell and Max Branning got their revenge on resident gurning evil presence Carl (although it’s nearly impossible to figure out who the good guys are any more), resulting in the day’s biggest hit and a 34% share.
Later on BBC Two, the Doctor’s 50th birthday celebrations continued with Buzzcocks: The Doctor Who Special (10pm). The ‘special’ part of the title referred to David Tennant’s stint in the host’s chair, along with the usual faces.
1.6 million viewers tuned in to Catherine Tate and logical sentences go head to head as the former assistant seemed to struggle with coherent thoughts.
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