Benefits Street drops to 4.1m viewers as outrage dwindles
Jeremy Paxman returned to prime time last night, fresh faced and fully shaven, to launch yet another new series in which he got to stand in front of the camera a lot, impressing viewers with how much he knows about everything.
The first episode of Britain’s Great War (BBC One, 9pm) focused on how a shocked nation reacted to the news of war and the surge of patriotism as everyone pulled their socks up and did their bit, etc. Not that the renowned grump was in favour of mindless slaughter but Paxman did aim to show viewers how the First World War shaped modern Britain for all the better.
An impressive 4.2 million viewers chose to spend their Monday night being re-educated by the broadcaster, resulting in the biggest audience in the 9pm slot and a 17% share.
The runner up for the coveted time slot was Channel 4’s Benefits Street (9pm) which, despite being all over the media for all the wrong reasons, looked like it was losing some of the nation’s interest. It might be down to the fact that the controversy may have overshadowed the fact that not a lot is happening on James Turner Street.
With the hoo-ha all but calmed down, last night saw residents help each other out of dire personal situations while waxing lyrical about the real benefits of the street – the lovely neighbourly vibe.
The documentary boasted an overnight figure of 3.6 million viewers for the opening episode, with the audience slowly climbing to 4.5 million people last week. Last night’s voyeuristic slice of life on the bread line saw viewers fall to just above 4 million viewers and a 17% share as the unadulterated outrage felt by some dissolved into plain boredom.
Or perhaps viewing the sorry and grimy details of an alcoholic’s day-to-day life was just a bit too depressing for a Monday night.
The show was still the second most talked about programme on Twitter, generating a total of 30,835 tweets during broadcast.
Even though it sounds like a bloody mark a tuberculosis sufferer might leave on a hanky, The Bletchley Circle (ITV, 9pm) is actually a quaint ITV drama about strong female characters involved with post-war crime-solving frolics.
Last night the second series came to an end with the fourth episode, which saw everyone’s favourite group of former code breakers return to Bletchley Park in order to take down some strikingly modern villains – some dastardly human traffickers.
If there’s one thing ITV can be happy about, it’s that the period crime drama has been a constant performer. The first episode opened to 4 million viewers in September 2012, mirroring series two’s debut four weeks ago. Last week’s The Bletchley Circle saw viewers drop to 3.7 million (perhaps burnt out by Hayley’s death beforehand) with last night matching that figure exactly, along with the 15% share.
Over on Channel 5, Celebrity Big Brother (9pm) performed well, sucking 2.5 million viewers into its vortex of shame, resulting in Channel 5’s biggest hit of the day and an 11% share. For yet another night in a row, the fractured reality show was the most tweeted about show, with a peak of 11,103 tweets per minute. This meant that there was an impressive 61 tweets for every 1000 viewers.
As usual the big players of the day went out around teatime, with Emmerdale (ITV) getting the OTT drama rolling at 7pm with an impressive 7.5 million viewers tuning in to see the latest small town backstabbing fun.
Over on BBC One at 8pm, the shiny new Carter clan continued to expand at an alarming rate on EastEnders. 7.5 million viewers – 34,000 more than Emmerdale – watched as new patriarch Stan was offered a chance to save the Vic, resulting in a 31% share.
In the end it was Northern rival Coronation Street (ITV) that claimed the biggest audience of the day, with 8.9 million viewers (a 39% share) tuning in for the first episode at 7:30pm. The second trip to Weatherfield at 8:30pm saw Fiz attempt to cope with the revelations from last week’s traumatic event and was watched by 8.2 million viewers and a 34% 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.