Animal Odd Couples manages to bring in 4.5m for BBC One
Thursday night saw Kirsty Young’s monthly torrent of national appeals once again take BBC One’s prime time slot as Crimewatch (BBC One, 9pm) returned for another bout of relatable horror stories and carefully considered reconstructions.
Complimenting Kirsty’s soothing demeanour was frosty protocol droid Matthew Amroliwala and rough-and-tumble bad cop Martin Bayfield as they followed up last month’s fresh Madeleine McCann appeal with some updates (no, nothing of actual significance) and a rogue’s gallery of fresh bad guys to bring to justice.
Usually hovering above the 3.4 million viewer mark, last month’s special appeal was watched by a whopping 6.7 million viewers but last night’s pedestrian edition only managed to capture the standard amount of interest. Just under 3 million responsible citizens tuned in to see what current dangers exist out there, netting a 14% share.
In the end, nothing short of a revelationary breakthrough could have competed with the mass of heavyweight juggernaut that is the light entertainment of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! (9pm). The thirteenth series of ITV’s unfathomably unstoppable ratings machine has continued to perform impressively for the broadcaster, with the sight of familiar faces lounging about in the sunshine proving enough of an attraction for weathered winter viewers.
Last night saw tabloid goon Matthew Allwright continue with his Heart of Darkness routine, managing to just about do everybody’s head in. Elsewhere Emmerdale‘s roaring warrior Lucy Pargeter got on all fours in a grubby limousine to secure a quality meal for her brood.
Thursday’s slice of insect related fun once again secured the biggest audience of the day, with 8.7 million viewers (a 37% share) tuning in to see the tension build between the most frustrated alpha males of the group – Matthew Allwright and Westlife’s Kian Egan.
At the same time BBC Two offered up some more quality scripted drama – this time in the form of one-off espionage piece Legacy (9pm).
Set in the grim and tired London of the 70s, the drama followed a young and inexperienced MI6 recruit as he attempted to lure a soviet diplomat (Sherlock‘s Jim Moriarty) into the Secret Intelligence Service at the height of the Cold War. An audience of 1.6 million viewers chose the most sobering 9pm option, resulting in a 7% share.
An hour earlier, MasterChef: The Professionals (8pm) proved to be BBC Two’s big hit of the day, with 3 million viewers tuning in to see the latest kitchen casualty.
Over on BBC One Liz Bonnin was back for a second and final wedge of Animal Odd Couples, the show that spends an hour showing viewers images of bears hugging humans and other scenes you can file under ‘A Bit Wrong’. Amazingly 4.5 million viewers caught up with the ultimate example of ‘easy viewing’, resulting in a 20% share.
A little earlier in the day a double shot of Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm and 8pm) saw Charity Dingle get as drunk as a pirate, commandeer a JCB digger and attempt to exact some revenge. The alcohol-fuelled antics were watched by 6.8 million and 6.3 million viewers respectively.
There was plenty of more teatime shouting and aggravation available on BBC One stuffed in between the drunken adventures from the Dales. Last night’s EastEnders (7:30pm) saw the aftermath of the Square’s latest disastrous wedding ceremony securing the day’s second biggest audience.
7.4 million viewers watched as jilted bride Roxy threw a wobbly of epic proportions, with The endless streams of running mascara-sponsored dialogue resulted in a 34% share.
I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! not only won the biggest audience but it also inspired the most tweets last night. The jungle action generated 43,421 tweets during the broadcast window, resulting in 5 tweets per every 1,000 viewers.
In that particular regard, 8 Mile on ITV4 at 10:30pm performed far better. While only 209,000 viewer actually watched Eminen’s retelling of the tale of little orphan Annie, the film was tweeted about 10,314 times, resulting in 49 tweets for every 1,000 people watching.
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.