EastEnders’ special brand of trauma nets 8.4m for BBC One
Tuesday brought another triumphant evening for gloomy soap EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm) as Ian Beale had the harrowing teatime task of identifying his daughter Lucy’s body and informing the family of her stunt demise.
Thankfully it wasn’t all doom and gloom in Albert Square with the producers cleverly juxtaposing the traumatising scenes of the Beale family’s highly expressive grief with images of Phil Mitchell giving mouth-to-mouth to the spawn of the Queen Vic’s resident pooch, Princess Di.
Even though Lucy Beale’s mysterious expiration only pulled in 6.4 million viewers last Friday, Monday’s episode saw the audience jump to 8.2 million viewers, even if it was a classic case of soap procrastination in which the victim’s father, Ian, bumbled around for 30 minutes, unaware of the impending police visit.
For the second night in a row BBC One’s flagship soap was the most watched show of the day. An audience of 8.4 million viewers watched as an inconsolable Ian broke the news to Lucy’s twin Peter, with both characters really going hell for leather for that prestigious Inside Soap award.
It’s fair to say that even if ITV’s Coronation Street had been airing last night, the momentum built up by EastEnders would have been enough to defeat the dominant force in the UK soap battle. The difficult scenes (including the Phil Mitchell doggy action) locked in a 38% share for the London-set half hour of misery.
Unsurprisingly, the soap was also the most tweeted about TV show of the day, with the scenes of shock and trauma generating over 61,000 tweets during the half hour running time.
Just before on ITV was the latest action from the sweet little town of Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) as Moira Barton continued to lie to her family about matters of paternity. Clearly the farmer has never seen a soap before because she should know these matters never end well, especially if it’s in the build up to Christmas.
5.9 million viewers tuned in for the rural ructions, resulting in a 30% share and providing ITV with its biggest audience of the day.
Straight up afterwards, it was time for ITV to head over to the more exotic locale of Vicente Calderón Stadium in Madrid for coverage of the latest Live UEFA Champions League (7:30pm) game.
The semi-final first leg match between Atletico Madrid and Chelsea saw the away team lose some crucial players with both goalkeeper Petr Cech and Captain John Terry taken out by injuries.
Despite this handicap, Chelsea still managed to fend off the Spanish team, with an average audience of 5.2 million viewers and a 23% share tuning in for the 2.5 hours of coverage. The game peaked in the final fifteen minutes with 6.7 million viewers witnessing the nil-all draw.
The second part of Emma Frost’s adaptation of Jamaica Inn went out at 9pm on BBC One, with last night’s slice of Gothic foreboding seeing Young Mary getting herself into some trouble on the moors. Luckily some strapping young lad was on hand for a swift rescue, although the same cannot be said for the viewing figures.
In just one day the audience for the period drama fell by a whopping 26%, with 4.5 million viewers failing to be tempted away by the football. An average share of 19% meant that while the Champions League game stole the first half of the 9pm slot, Jamaica Inn managed the largest share for the second half of the episode.
Over on Channel 4, another period drama was tidying up its playthings after four weeks of struggle. The much-vaunted sequel to The Devil’s Whore, New Worlds (9pm) had the impressive cast, epic story and breath taking 17th century-set backdrops but failed to capture the public’s imagination.
Opening with 668,000 viewers four weeks ago, last night’s final episode of New Worlds was watched by only 312,000 viewers, resulting in an undeniable disaster for the broadcaster. The cast of strong, beautiful ahead-of-their-time ladies and rugged men may be littered with familiar and respectable faces but there’s no arguing with a 1% share.
Which meant that The Mentalist (9pm) – something that’s fairly easy to overlook – over on Channel 5 has been securing a bigger audience with the crime procedural (it’s Sherlock but… more Californian). 913,000 viewers tuned in to see the sixth series episode staring Simon Baker as ‘psychic’ Patrick Jane.
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.