ITV nails the 9pm slot by resurrecting Lord Lucan
Gary Lineker’s unique mug was given its very own prime time spot on BBC One last night, as the purveyor of deep fried potato slices – and one-time footballer – took a gently-paced stroll down memory lane with Sports Personality of the Year at 60 (9pm).
Thanks to a plethora of talking heads, viewers were let in on what makes a winner (the BBC is always looking for the whole package) – apparently a person who is super good at sporting but also has a wizard personality to compliment the sweaty achievements.
Princess Anne, Zara Phillips and less well-connected recipients of the award (Bradley Wiggins, Paula Radcliffe) sat down to relive their memories of the ceremonies. Unfortunately, it seemed like Wednesday night’s audience wasn’t quite as enthused as the former winners, with only 2.5 million people choosing to spend the night basking in their glory.
An audience share of 12% made sure that Lineker’s in-depth guide to the past 60 years of celebrating sporting and personality, all in the one place, didn’t capture the 9pm slot.
That particular accolade belonged to ITV and the first episode of a new two-part drama, Lucan (9pm). Rory Kinnear took on the role of Richard John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan a man who needed little introduction.
Last night looked into Lucan’s privileged world, detailing the professional gambler’s life up until the night his children’s nanny was beaten to death. Drawing on assumption and speculation, the confident drama decided that caution be dammed and pretty much filled in all the blanks that so many have spent decades pondering over.
An audience of 3.9 million viewers tuned in to see the dark tale unfold, with renowned difficult person Christopher Eccleston playing Lucan’s gambling accomplice, John Aspinall. An audience share of 19% meant that the grand drama was easily the most-watched show in the time slot. It remains to be seen if next week’s venture into pure, unadulterated speculation will continue to be a draw for viewers.
At the same time on Channel 4, King’s College Hospital once again opened its doors to the public in a grand bid to terrify viewers into never hurting themselves again. The penultimate episode of 24 Hours in A&E‘s fourth series saw the usual array of damaged humans in perilous predicaments and captured 2 million viewers and a 9% share, Channel 4’s biggest audience of the day.
An hour earlier, Nigel and Adam’s Farm Kitchen (8pm) brought in 3.4 million for BBC One, while sister channel BBC Two continued to reap the rewards of eternally popular culinary show, MasterChef: The Professionals (8pm). 2.8 million viewers tuned in to see the three finalists sharpen their knives in the second to last episode, netting a 12% share.
But the big draw at 8pm was over on ITV, with the inventively titled I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! Coming Out providing fans with some relief after Sunday night’s abrupt end.
A whopping 6.2 million viewers watched the carefully fabricated threads of drama that were created to add a little tension to the celebrities’ post-jungle interviews, with the launch of their new careers as general ‘personalities’ pulling in an audience share of 27%.
The midweek soap action belonged firmly to ITV, with Emmerdale (7pm) securing 6.6 million viewers and a 34% share at 7pm, resulting in the day’s second biggest audience.
As usual, it was the soapy heft of Coronation Street (7:30pm) that got most bums on seats, with 7.8 million viewers watching a distressed Gail (is there any other kind?) having to choose between her psychotic son and the other one whose face keeps changing every couple of years.
The latest tension in the nation’s favourite street brought in an impressive 37% share.
Elsewhere, Gogglebox (10pm) continued to perform well for Channel 4, bringing in 1.7 million viewers and inspiring 17,246 tweets throughout the broadcast.
The Only Way Is Essexmas (ITV2, 10pm) only secured 653,000 viewers but was the most tweeted about show of the day. Arg, Lucy and the rest of the spray-tanned clown’s unseasonal adventures generated a mind boggling 98,282 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.