Emmerdale pips past EastEnders for Thursday evening glory
Last night BBC One delved right into the benefits debate craze that has been sweeping the nation’s TV screens these past few months, but thankfully for viewers the broadcaster offered up a more balanced approach than its commercial rivals.
That’s right, instead of a regional thriller or the latest reality competition in the prime time slot, last night BBC One attempted instead to enlighten the viewing nation with Don’t Cap My Benefits (9pm).
The hour-long Panorama special focused on residents living in Brent, one of London’s worst hit areas, with an audience of 3.6 million people tuning in for the discouraging look at families struggling to cope with the drastic changes to the benefits system.
The topic seems to have struck a chord with last night’s viewers, with the show pulling in a 17% share and the biggest audience in the 9pm slot.
Slightly less despairing was 2008 film The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (9pm) over on BBC Two, the moving tale of boyhood friendship blossoming through the iron bars of a concentration camp. Just over 1 million viewers tuned in to confirm their sneaking suspicion that things just weren’t going to end well for the pair, resulting in a 5% share.
Even bleaker still was the other option over on ITV, as the commercial broadcaster aired another repeat of It’ll Be Alright on the Night (9pm). Not only that, but it wasn’t even a pre-2006 episode with Barry Norman.
No, last night ITV enthusiasts were subjected to a newer episode featuring Griff Rhys Jones and his endless monologues. 2.7 million viewers watched the clips of ITV’s top stars continuously fluff their lines to show what fun they have, resulting in a 13% share.
Probably the happiest of the lot was the second part of Channel 4’s challenging documentary about the adoption process, 15,000 Kids and Counting (9pm). Yesterday’s view into the world of social workers looked at a three year old boy and his seven year old sister who struggled to find a family because of their age.
The sometimes heart-breaking watch pulled in 988,000 viewers – down from last week’s 1.3 million – but offered some light at the end of the tunnel and a 5% share.
Meanwhile, Channel 5’s 9pm offering didn’t even register on the despair level, due to its off-the-radar all-encompassing awfulness. As if the bog-standard everyday confessions weren’t enough, Thursday night play host to The Unseen Fred West Confessions (9pm) which were recently released from the police vaults.
943,000 people tuned in for the reconstructions of the police interrogations, netting a 5% share in the process.
An hour earlier MasterChef (BBC One, 8pm) continued to perform well, bringing in 4.3 million viewers and a 20% share, while The Hoarder Next Door on Channel 5 was watched by 1.2 million and a 6% share.
A little earlier Emmerdale (ITV) treated viewers to a double helping as Donna Windsor returned to the tempestuous small town to drop a bombshell or two (metaphorically speaking – it’s not quite turned into Hollyoaks just yet).
The day’s biggest audience tuned in to discover that Donna may not be long for this world, with her plan to fob off her daughter to Marlon Dingle pulling in an audience of 6.2 million. An hour later the audience fell to 5.7 million but the rural soap managed to bag the third biggest audience of the night.
Which meant that little ol’ BBC One soap EastEnders (7:30pm) came second place with the latest automotive accident securing a 31% share. Like Tiffany and so many before her, last night it was the turn of Lola Mitchell to be on the losing end in a fight with a car.
Worth watching for Jay Mitchell’s epic reaction shot alone, the Albert Square collision was watched by 6.1 million viewers and a 31% 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.