The Taste of Nigella’s comeback tempts 1.6m to Channel 4
Tuesday night brought a severe case of the munchies for Nigella Lawson and Anthony Bourdain as Channel 4 launched a UK version of ‘hit’ American ABC show The Taste at 9pm.
The simple format basically saw the notorious narcotic-fuelled chef and eh…Anthony Bourdain (te he he) chomp their way through a plethora of dishes in order to find that one concoction that could soothe their demanding and heightened taste buds.
The contestants – a mixture of professionals and regular, everyday folk – were tasked with whipping up their signature dish, only to be blind tasted by the famished chefs.
Starting out as what The Great British Bake Off would have ended up like if it wasn’t on BBC Two, The Taste takes things a step further by splicing in the more redundant aspects of The Voice to recreate that heightened faux drama of American reality shows.
The special added ingredient of course was the holy trinity of culinary personalities carrying the show – Bourdain brought along his disreputable past and stinging character, Nigella was there to calm things down with her signature cleavage and ‘glad eye’ look and finally Ludo Lefebvre added an authoritative French accent to the mix.
Despite the insane amount of free publicity heaped upon one judge in particular, the new show didn’t exactly set Tuesday night’s schedule alight. Only 1.6 million viewers tuned in last night, no doubt trying to understand incoherent judge Ludo Lefebvre, who sounded like he gained access to Anthony and Nigella’s medicine cabinet.
The culinary feast attracted Channel 4’s second biggest audience of the day (after Location, Location, Location, which brought in 2.4 million at 8pm) and a 7% share.
Naturally, those folk on Twitter were quick to vocalise each individual thought that they formed, resulting in 14,230 tweets during broadcast. The Taste hit a peak of 430 tweets per minute, the second highest of the day.
Scandal was on the menu at the same time on BBC One in the second part of prohibited love-fest The 7:39 (9pm). While the morally ambiguous show might have trundled along on schedule, hitting the expected dramatic plot stops along the way, viewers were so enraptured that the show secured the biggest audience in the 9pm slot for a second night in a row.
The concluding part of the will-they/won’t-they/-okay-stop-now drama actually topped Monday night’s audience by just over 100,000 viewers. In total, 5.8 million of us tuned in to see how the messy story of unwanted intimacy would end, securing a highly respectable 24% share.
Things were even less cheery over on ITV as they explored the country’s most notorious criminals wot had the gall to lie to the ultimate authority – the nation’s media.
The Lying Game: Crimes That Fooled Britain (9pm) rounded up forensic psychologists, behavioural experts and other talking heads on ITV’s speed dial list who used their expert power of hindsight to explain to us – the simpleton audience – how the guilty parties were obviously faking their grief. 2.4 million tuned in, resulting in a 10% share.
Over on Channel 5, Celebrity Big Brother (9pm) still hadn’t gone away and secured a now-standard audience of 2 million viewers and a 9% share. This was followed by an even grimmer presence at 10pm with Autopsy: Michael Jackson’s Last Hours.
What better way to celebrate the legacy of the controversial entertainer than sifting through the stomach contents of his corpse? Impressively, just under 1.5 million people hopped aboard for the thrilling adventure.
As usual, the soap activity earlier on in the day defeated the prime time contenders before they even had a chance, with Emmerdale bagging 6.9 million viewers at 7pm on ITV, the day’s second biggest audience.
Which meant that EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm) was yesterday’s big winner, securing 7.6 million viewers. Last night’s audience were treated to the surprisingly well-kept secret of Jane Beale’s return, catching everyone by surprise.
Naturally Twitter reacted, with the show generating 11,200 tweets during broadcast while securing a 34% share and Tuesday’s top spot.
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. Overnight data supplied by TRP are based on 15 minute slot averages. This may differ from tape checked figures, which are based on a programme’s actual start and end time