A significant Death in Paradise brings in 7.1m to BBC One
While Tuesday night brought brutal weather to most of the country, BBC One offered fatigued viewers an ideal chance to return to a sun-soaked paradise – sometimes it seems like schedulers actually know what they’re doing.
But the hedonistic return came at a cost for the third series of Death in Paradise (9pm) as its main star became the latest victim of the week, opening the door for a brand new ‘bumbling’ lead; new face, exact same characteristics.
It must have been a shock for fans of the genteel detective programme to see Ben Miller’s DI Poole dispatched within the first few minutes, sent off to the great retired detective agency in the sky (I believe it’s called Watch – Sky channel 109, Virgin Media channel 124). Thankfully everyone’s favourite funny-looking flogger of phone and broadband packages, Kris Marshall, was there to pick up the pieces.
Slipping into Ben Miller’s shoes with suspicious ease, Marshall landed on the idyllic (but clearly precarious) island of Saint-Marie to solve his predecessor’s murder, while simultaneously rebooting the whole fish-out-of-water routine that has worked so well for two series.
The shock tactic of Miller’s death might have proved too much for the show’s civilised fans, but the murder seems to have paid off for BBC One. 7.1 million viewers tuned in to watch Marshall cut his teeth, pulling in the biggest 9pm audience by a long shot, securing a 30% share and the day’s second biggest audience.
The figure is even a small improvement on the audience that watched the second series opener of Death in Paradise on a miserable Tuesday night back in January 2013, which grabbed 6.9 million viewers.
Unfortunately, all the homicidal excitement on BBC One meant that barely anyone had time for Paul O’Grady’s Animal Orphans (9pm) on ITV.
Yesterday saw the former Lily Savage and his bleeding heart bumped up from general daytime schedule fodder all the way up to the glittering heights of prime time. O’Grady took the chance to expand his animal interest away from his beloved canines and welcomed all sad little creatures on to the show.
3 million viewers tuned in to see O’Grady fawn over the various orphaned animals of every species, but since they can’t actually talk, who’s to say that they’re not just animal actors hamming it up for the star? The retelling of Bambi also took in a 13% share.
Over on Channel 5, Celebrity Big Brother (9pm) managed to attract 2.2 million lost souls, while the second episode of Channel 4’s ‘exciting’ new US import, The Taste (9pm), took a bit of a tumble.
Despite the media convergence around Nigella Lawson in recent months, the show opened to a disappointing 1.6 million viewers last week, with last night’s spoon-sized portion of hot tasting action netting only 862,000 viewers and a 4% share.
Earlier at 8pm, Holby City (BBC One) continued to pull off the same weekly magic trick, with another 4.9 million viewers and a 21% share tuning in for the procedural medical drama.
So it would seem that people are finally copping on to the fact that there’s a whole week of The Great Sport Relief Bake Off (BBC Two, 8pm) with a noticeable night on night audience increase. 3.7 million viewers watched the mini-series first episode on Monday evening, while 4.4 million viewers tuned in to see Jo Brand take over hosting duties last night.
Bagging a 19% audience share, the second episode of The Great Sport Relief Bake Off proved to be BBC Two’s biggest hit of the day.
Earlier in the day, Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) performed to its expected standard with scenes of Sam Dingle’s day in court pulling in 6.7 million viewers and a 32% share.
But it was EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm) and the sudden reappearance of Sonia Fowler that brought in Tuesday’s biggest audience. 7.4 million viewers watched as a broken Carol Jackson stepped out of Albert Square in a moment of madness to track down her long lost daughter – who apparently has been living two minutes outside of the E20 postcode.
The typically unhappy family reunion secured a 30% share for BBC One.
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.