ITV rules Wed with Corrie’s repetitive relationship drama
Wednesday night saw BBC One and ITV line up new episodes of dull old favourites to battle it out, signalling the end of the festive season once and for all.
All trace of timely spontaneous scheduling was erased last night as the nation’s favourite channels got firmly back into their predictable routine with broad and safe lightweight dramas.
Always with its finger on the pulse of middle-aged parental fears, Waterloo Road (BBC One, 8:30pm) returned with a feature length episode which included the usual array of issues that would get any real school shut down immediately.
The start of a new term saw the arrival of a posh young go-getter who was determined to cause a bit of a stir. 3.4 million viewers tuned in to see all the happy children and teachers return to school for another tenure of high drama and suspiciously frequent accidents for the special one and a half hour running time, resulting in a 14% share.
Earlier at 8pm, ITV viewers were once again invited to return to the lovey county of Midsomer, a place full of picturesque houses and crazy-as-a-bag-of-Hollyoaks-plots criminals.
The latest two hours of slaughtering fun in Midsomer Murders (ITV, 8pm) saw the writers push the boat out slightly, giving the pantomime a bit of edge. Instead of a giant murderous wheel of cheese, viewers were treated to a proper serial killer, who used medieval torture methods and everything!
Luckily DCI Barnaby (the poor old thing who has been part of the neverending game of Cluedo since the very first episode) and plucky new recruit DS Nelson were on hand to sift through the obvious clues and feign interest.
Fans of Midsomer Murders are used to bizarre broadcasting schedules for each new series (last year the six episodes of the 15th series were spread out across a whole year) but last night’s round of quaint and fey slaying proved a relief for ardent followers, coming only two weeks after the series 16 opener.
Perhaps the schedulers have come to accept the fact that time is no friend of the show’s target audience.
5 million viewers tuned in to see new sidekick Nelson cut his teeth, realising in horror that even Emmerdale would have been a safer fictional settlement to end up in, which resulted in a 21% share and scoring the biggest audience from 8:30pm onwards.
Meanwhile in the nether regions of Elstree, mischief was afoot in Celebrity Big Brother: Live Eviction (Channel 5, 9pm) which – as it turns out – wasn’t an eviction at all.
Last night saw oxygen deprived lost souls Casey Batchelor and Lee Ryan leave the house to secretly enter their own private oasis, complete with a love bed, mood lighting and special HD night cameras.
2.4 million people watched as the two celebrities desperately tried to write their own off the cuff storylines, netting an 11% share and Channel 5’s biggest audience of the day with the intense dramatic results.
Channel 4 also provided some observational car crash reality content of its own, although the chances were some actual car crashes were actually involved in the latest bout of tragedy in 24 Hours in A&E (9pm).
The new series of the real life hospital drama did little to mess with the successful format, dolloping heavy portions of unspeakable tragedy, seriously unfortunate circumstances and a heap of disconcerting perma-cheerful nurses.
2.3 million viewers tuned in for the opening episode of the fifth series (it began three years ago) and were rewarded with images of a young child crying in pain and an elderly woman crying in despair, resulting in a 9% share and Channel 4’s biggest hit of the day.
ITV truly had the soap market cornered yesterday, thanks to BBC One’s EastEnders (8pm) dropping the ball just enough to fall to third place. Scenes of Danny Dyer attempting to do the whole sympathetic barman thing attracted 6.7 million viewers and a 27% share.
Unfortunately for the Walford soap Emmerdale (7pm) managed to net over 7 million viewers half an hour earlier, resulting in a 33% share.
Which meant that Tina and Peter’s head-piercingly annoying affair on Coronation Street (7:30pm) once again won the nation’s heart and mind (and whatever else was up for grabs). Somehow, the day’s biggest audience – an impressive 8.3 million viewers – managed to stick through another episode of plot procrastination and Tina issuing more ultimatum.
Last night’s repetitive drama from Weatherfield’s latest barmaid bathed in liquid foundation overshadowed all of the competition with a 36% share.
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