The Taste continues to sour for Channel 4
Fans of twee murder drama Death in Paradise (BBC One, 9pm) were in for a shock last night as a swarm of Zombies descended upon the idyllic island (well, apart from all them regular slaughters) of Saint-Marie.
Not to worry – your favourite cerebral crime drama hasn’t changed genre in a desperate effort to fight off cancellation as a result of the recent changes; instead DI Goodman’s (that bloke from those ads) second ever case saw a horror film crew take over the Caribbean Island.
Naturally, it was only a matter of minutes before the whole production went tits-up as a cast member was fatally poisoned, leaving Goodman – the island’s new gunslinger – convinced that a bigger conspiracy was afoot.
The second episode of the third series easily secured the 9pm slot last night as fans were still reeling from Ben Miller’s sudden and brutal departure the previous week. 6.9 million viewers watched as Goodman attempted to keep a famous starlet (played by Michelle Ryan, it is a fictional universe after all) alive, all secretly disappointed that a deceased DI Poole wasn’t among the zombie hoard.
The latest tale of sandy beaches, blue skies and bloody corpses fended off all competition, securing a 29% share.
Meanwhile over on ITV, Paul O’Grady was back to fill up an hour of the desirable prime time slot with a curiously ‘daytime’ formula. The former cabaret star continued on his valiant quest to hug every sad animal on the planet in the second part of Paul O’Grady’s Animal Orphans (9pm).
This week’s thrilling episode saw Paul travel around the African continent, cuddling orphan cheetah cubs, patting a sorrowful orphaned rhino and bonding with baby baboons.
The repetitive nature of the show didn’t bother most viewers, with the majority of last week’s audience of 3 million coming back. In total, 2.8 million viewers watched as a 58 year old man got all gushy over incarcerated former wild animals, netting a 12% share.
Over on Channel 5, Celebrity Big Brother (9pm) held up the bad taste quota forced upon the broadcaster, securing 2.3 million viewers and a 10% share. As usual, the reality show topped the twitter charts, generating 57,684 tweets during broadcast, with a peak of 2,164 tweets per minute.
Speaking of bad taste – Nigella, Anthony and that other fella were back for another hour of punishment in the third episode of the localised version of America’s ‘hit’ culinary show, The Taste (Channel 4, 9pm).
After last week’s second dollop of competitive tasting saw the audience fall by a devastating -48%, last night’s episode claimed some viewers back but it was hardly enough. In the end, 867,000 feverish viewers watched as the three judges tasted spoonfuls of food in an extremely exciting manner, resulting in a 4% share.
Not only that, the search for that ultimate palate-pleasing taste netted the smallest audience out of all the main broadcasters in that time slot. Despite this, the show was one of the most tweeted about programmes last night, generating 3,465 tweets during the broadcast.
Over on BBC Two there was another (less flashy) search going on as presenter and warlock Neil Oliver followed historian boffin types who were trying to hunt down a king’s remains.
Partly inspired by Channel 4’s 2012 exhumation of Richard III from a Leicester car park, The Search for Alfred the Great (BBC Two, 9pm) saw the team eventually track down a spiffing great pelvis, which may or may not belong to the 9th century ruler.
1.7 million viewers tuned in for the remarkable discovery, resulting in a 7% share.
Tuesday’s most popular shows arrived earlier in the day, with Emmerdale (ITV) pulling in the second biggest audience at 7pm. A whopping 7 million viewers tuned in to see the residents of Yorkshire’s most tumultuous village spend the day in court yet again, beating ITV’s biggest audience with a 33% share.
Meanwhile on BBC One, the planets reached a very rare alignment, allowing EastEnders (7:30pm) to be the day’s biggest hit. An average of 7.5 million viewers tuned in to see Jake Stone return to the whiskey bottle as his life fell apart around him (to be expected when one lives in Walford) securing a mighty 34% share.
Much later in the night, there was some grotesque programming in the dark regions of Channel 5 with the third and final Autopsy at 10pm. After slicing open Michael Jackson and then Whitney Houston’s body for our late-night entertainment, last night’s seriously wrong hour of overshare focused on pill-riddled Anna Nicole Smith, finally filling us in on her last meals and chemical pick me ups.
The enlightening Autopsy: Anna Nicole Smith’s Last Hours performed decently enough, bringing in 1.3 million post Celebrity Big Brother viewers and an 8% 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.