The Midwives slay Clarkson and Top Gear for 8pm glory
Once again Friday’s viewing audience kicked off the weekend the only way they knew how – by binging on the nation’s favourite soaps.
As soap fans hoped for some kind of resolution to the many storylines on offer (for two days at least), Coronation Street (ITV) once again came out on top as Owen and Gavin spent two episodes attempting to track down a slaughtered spectre on the building site (kind of).
The first episode at 7:30pm proved to be the biggest hit of the day with 8.2 million viewers tuning in to see Gary deal with the aftermath of his vicious attack on a dodgy developer, dropping to 7 million viewers at 8:30pm as the bloodied husk in question went walkabout, though still enough to grab the number two spot.
At 8pm, EastEnders (BBC One) brought Kat and Alfie some more marital troubles, because apparently the nation hasn’t had its fill of that yet. 6.9 million viewers watched the latest bout of shouting from Albert Square, resulting in a 31% share. Back over on ITV a little earlier, Emmerdale confirmed its position as the nation’s third favourite soap, bagging an audience of 6.6 million viewers along the way.
Friday night wasn’t all frothy drama full of spray tanned lookers though – BBC One saw fit to resurrect the horror of Jonathon Creek (9pm), a full decade after the last proper series. 6.3 million viewers tuned in to find out that the crime-solving magician was now somehow married to Sarah Alexander (surely his biggest trick of all).
The illusionist’s impressive audience didn’t have much competition to speak of – empowering lady drama Edge of Heaven (9pm) bagged 1.8 million viewers on ITV, while 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (Channel 4, 9pm) was watched by 1.9 million.
Saturday’s big players were few and far between with greedy hogs The Voice UK (BBC One) and Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway (ITV) going head-to-head at 7pm, apparently leaving audiences too exhausted to watch anything else.
The biggest audience of the day tuned in to The Voice UK to watch some famous faces feign concern for their chosen plebs as the blind auditions finally came to a close.
7 million viewers (a 30% share) watched as Kylie, Will.i.am, Will.iam’s dad and Ricky Wilson placed their weakest players in the Pokemon arena of death, where vocal chords are the only weapon – all two hours and 10 minutes of it!
At the same time on ITV, light entertainment’s two cheekiest chappies were back with their own Saturday night extravaganza with Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway (7pm). Kind of like Noel’s House Party without – crucially – the actual presence of Noel Edmonds, Ant and Dec set up a celebrity chef, gave the needy people of the country some shiny tat to ogle at and launched a member of the audience 150ft into the air. 6.4 million viewers watched, resulting in a 25% share.
After all the flashing lights and hullabaloo died down, Casualty (BBC One, 9:20pm) was on hand to gently bring viewers back down to earth with its exquisite mix of severed arteries and raging hormones. A sturdy 5.2 million viewers showed up for their Saturday night appointment, netting a 25% share.
The rest of the day’s most-watched shows came in the format of easy-to-digest game shows where at least half of the audience hasn’t a clue what’s going on – not that that even spoils the fun.
Pointless Celebrities managed to capture 4.5 million viewers at 6:15pm on BBC one while ITV’s The Cube brought in an audience of 3.8 million viewers at 8:15pm.
Despite all of Saturday’s bombastic noise and attention-grabbing visuals, the weekend’s most intense battle was to be fought on Sunday as the broadcasters rolled out their ratings juggernauts.
The final series of Dancing on Ice continued to be a dependable little Sunday night spectacle for ITV, with the main event securing 5.4 million at 6:15pm and The Results bringing in 4.2 million at 8:30pm.
Countryfile (7pm, BBC One) was the second most-watched show of that day with 6.8 million viewers tuning in to see Tom Heap peer down an unused mineshaft, securing a 29% share.
Mr Selfridge (ITV, 9pm) went head-to-head with the BBC’s mighty force of The Musketeers (BBC One, 9pm) and Dragon’s Den (BBC Two, 9pm) with mixed results. The flamboyant retailer was watched by 4.5 million viewers, beating the Dragon’s audience of 3.2 million.
The Musketeers went one slightly better, bringing in 4.7 million viewers – though still a surprisingly low 20% share.
An hour earlier, the impregnable popularity of Call the Midwife (BBC One, 8pm) continued unabated for series three’s penultimate episode. The weekend’s biggest audience – a whopping 8.9 million viewers – were delivered into the hands of BBC One, while Top Gear‘s latest slice of creakingly staged banter locked in a still-impressive 5.1 million souls and a 19% 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.