Game of Thrones’ wicked Purple Wedding nets 793,000 viewers
At long last, last night’s TV schedule brought some swift, sweet retribution for long-suffering fans of Game of Thrones (Sky Atlantic, 9pm) as the balance of power was finally and ferociously shifted in the ‘good guy’s’ favour.
Ten agonising months after viewers pretty much lost their heads (ho, ho) over the where-the-hell-did-that-come-from?! brutality of the infamous Red Wedding, Team Stark was finally given a freebie in the second episode of the highly anticipated fourth series.
An average audience of 793,000 viewers tuned in to see The Lion and The Rose and witness the union between everyone’s favourite lil tyrannical sociopath, King Jofferry, and ‘a wicked little bitch from Highgarden’, the ambitious Margaery Tyrell.
An audience share of 4% witnessed one of the most awkward wedding receptions in TV history (the hysterics of EastEnders included) before a mysterious adversary played their lethal hand, leaving viewers and the fictional continent of Westeros shocked, but mostly satisfied, by the sweet taste of justice.
It seems Sky has made a conscious decision to gather the feverish audience in one place after last week’s première episode saw a reported half a million viewers watch the 2am US simulcast on Monday morning (live viewing and those that watched the recording within 24 hours), followed by a further 629,000 live viewers at 9pm that night.
One thing’s for sure though, the combination of Sky’s less-fragmented viewing tactic (there was no simulcast or catch-up option before the 9pm showing) and the events of the Purple Wedding, itself helped push the live figure up past last week’s debut, Two Swords.
Once again, the shocking events saw shocked and delighted wedding viewers flock to Twitter to celebrate the cathartic bout of regicide. The episode generated an impressive 67,786 tweets throughout the broadcast, meaning that for every 1,000 viewers there were 86 tweets.
Game of Thrones‘ Tweets were only bettered by the less-convincing narrative of Made in Chelsea (E4, 10pm), with the semi-reality show pulling in 595,000 loyal viewers and generating 102,886 tweets.
Meanwhile back in the much benign and gentle lands of terrestrial TV, ITV offered up the conclusion to the brisk and swift two-part drama, Undeniable (9pm). The low commitment thriller-diller staring Casualty‘s Claire Goose as a woman trying to bring her possible mother-slayer (Spook’s Peter Firth) to justice.
Unusually for these types of short-lived serials, there wasn’t a huge drop in audience week on week. After 5.9 million tuned in for the opening episode, 5.4 million viewers watched last night’s end game, capturing a 24% share, the most watched show in the 9pm slot and the day’s fifth biggest audience.
Over on BBC One, another short-lived series wrapped up as the highly dubious quest of The Treasure Hunters (9pm) concluded with its second episode. 2.7 million viewers tuned in to see two presenters have the most exotic gap year ever – all thanks to that licence fee – resulting in a 12% share.
The only option in the 9pm line-up to match the horror of any wedding in Game of Thrones came from Channel 4, with its usual Monday night trip through the corridors of blood and anguish in One Born Every Minute.
The latest expletive-filled hour of labour and general trauma netted Channel 4’s biggest audience of the day with 1.8 million viewers and an 8% share.
As if all that drama in the 9pm slot wasn’t enough, Monday night saw all three of the UK’s big soaps make a claim for the teatime crown. First up was Emmerdale at 7pm on ITV, with Charity’s pregnancy woes netting 6.2 million viewers and a 34% share.
Over on EastEnders, there was ongoing trouble for the ever-growing Carter clan as Deano Wicks made one of those surprise reappearances that the London soap has really been nailing at the moment.
BBC One’s biggest audience of the day – 7.1 million viewers – watched as Shirley Carter’s estranged son came knocking on evil relic Stan Carter’s door, resulting in a 34% share.
But, of course, the big daddy of Monday night’s viewing was the double-helping of Weatherfield drama. The long-running (but thankfully finite) extramarital liaison between whiskey-soaked Coronation Street stud Peter Barlow and the unseasonably-tanned Tina McIntyre somehow continued to pull viewers in, with 7.9 million watching and a 39% share tuning in at 7:30pm for the adulterous hook-up.
7.5 million viewers came back for the messy clean-up at 8:30pm, with an audience share of 34% managing to stomach the scenes of Peter’s guilt-ridden whiskey tears.
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.uks 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 programmes actual start and end time.