Teatime violence sees hour-long Emmerdale shine
Tuesday night saw Emmerdale restart its campaign for ratings glory, after ending 2013’s race as the nation’s third favourite soap, despite having a stellar year.
Thanks to some sensational storylines, last year brought a great deal of success for the rural soap which constantly beat BBC One’s EastEnders.
As a number of long-running storylines were wrapped up in crowd pleasing stunt episodes, casual viewers started to dwindle leaving the door open for EastEnders to get its groove back (which basically meant bringing back half the cast from the 90s) and work its way back into viewer’s hearts.
After letting EastEnders slump into a false sense of security, last night saw the second half of an hour-long episode of Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) clash directly with the Walford soap and there was one clear winner.
The day’s biggest audience gravitated towards ITV’s 60 minutes of small town malevolence and betrayal as Cain Dingle brought violence to an accepting teatime audience.
6.6 million viewers tuned in to see the village bad boy waterboard his ex, Charity, resulting in a 30% share. While this audience wouldn’t usually guarantee a show to make it into the top five on a standard Tuesday, last night the gods were smiling upon the little violent soap that could.
However, ITV’s success was fairly hollow – the station only had one other programme place in the top ten, with ITV News at 6pm attracting 4 million viewers.
All the excitement resulted in viewers shunning a pedestrian episode of EastEnders on BBC One (7:30pm), with the soap seeing a significantly smaller than usual audience. Which is a shame as fans would have been treated to a less-miserable-than-usual Walford – Carol Jackson could have been actually described as looking happy in a few scenes.
Just a little over 5 million viewers watched as Carol and teenage sweetheart David Wicks found a few spare minutes to get hot and nasty, somehow managing not to repel the show’s measly 20% share.
BBC One went on to gather up its strength, with Holby City outshining Celebrity Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (ITV) at 8pm as the shows pulled in 4.7 million and 3.1 million viewers, respectively.
Probably an even worse place to live than both Emmerdale and Walford is the tiny little Caribbean island of Sainte-Marie, which was once again shocked by a brutal death in Death in Paradise (BBC One, 9pm).
The third episode of the Ben Miller-less third series once again saw a bunch of white people descending on the island with usual carnage to follow. 6.6 million viewers tuned to see Sgt Best’s old mate prematurely expire as one of his escort sessions got out of hand.
The gentle and unchallenging show based around homicide secured the 9pm slot and won a 28% share.
At the same time on ITV, Paul O’Grady brought viewers the very definition of ‘filler television’ with another thrilling instalment of his ‘animals and emotions’ show.
This week on Paul O’Grady’s Animal Orphans (9pm), viewers got a chance to see the former cabaret star pet an orphaned rhino and an orphaned giraffe and form a special bond with both of them (he’s been doing this for three episodes now).
The final slice of heavy petting secured an audience of 2.9 million viewers and a 12% share.
At the same time, there was some alternative animal fun on offer and this being BBC Two, the narrative was taken a little bit further in Inside the Animal Mind (9pm). And no, there weren’t any invasive medical procedures.
With the gushing emotional narrative sliced out and a heavy dollop of complying to the channel’s educational remit thrown in, Chris Packham was on a mission to get inside his dogs’ minds.
1.3 million viewers watched as the former The Really Wild Show presenter attempted ‘to uncover the secrets of animals’ intelligence, emotions and self-awareness’ (all through ethical means, naturally), resulting in a 5% share.
The Taste served up another spoonful of sadness for the schedulers over on Channel 4, as the fourth episode brought a week on week fall. The opening episode secured a decent 1.6 million for the broadcaster but last night’s slice of culinary sorrow only managed a paltry 794,000 viewers and a 3% share.
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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.