Unhappy drama Happy Valley leads a strong night for BBC One
Last night saw BBC One take viewers on a second trip to the misleadingly-named Happy Valley (9pm), as Sarah Lancashire’s bruised and broken copper, Catherine Cawood, spent an hour of prime time telly flitting between looking haunted, rattled and damaged.
Sally Wainwright’s latest drama pulled no punches when telling the tale of an unruly Wild West Yorkshire town in which Lancashire’s sergeant attempts to maintain the law while managing her own chaotic emotional baggage.
The bleak drama, which goes out of its way to prove things really are grim up North, opened last week with an impressive 6.3 million viewers, but the second episode witnessed a -13% fall in viewers.
In total, 5.5 million viewers tuned in to see Sergeant Cawood battle her demons in order to locate a local girl who had been tied up in a neighbour’s grotty basement. The second slice of the well-executed bleary eyed drama took in a 25% share and easily won the 9pm slot.
Over on BBC Two, things were a little more genteel as the hard working folk at a water company fixed some leaks and what not. Filed under the ‘people just doing their jobs’ subgenre of boring TV documentaries, the fourth episode of the exhilarating Watermen: A Dirty Business (9pm) attracted an audience of 1.8 million viewers and an 8% share.
At the same time on Channel 4, Educating Essex‘s Mr Drew continued to whip some young scallywags into shape as Mr Drew’s School for Boys (9pm) somehow survived its first episode without getting shut down by the department of education.
Impressively, the second week of parent-shaming educational fun actually improved on last week’s opening episode by 6%. In total, 1.5 million viewers tuned in to see fragile parents of feral children being shamed to tears for the nation’s entertainment, netting a 7% share.
Earlier at 8pm, the irresistible pull of Holby City on BBC One helped secure the show’s usual audience of 4.6 million viewers, while The Big Allotment Challenge (8pm) on sister channel BBC Two seems to have finally found its base audience.
After opening with 2.5 million viewers, the past three weeks has seen the ratings fluctuate, with the fourth episode of the grass-growing competition settling at 1.8 million viewers and a 9% share.
At the same time on Channel 4, members of the public were busy flashing their dangly bits, mysterious growths and hidden rashes to the team on Embarrassing Bodies: Live from the Clinic (8pm). 1.1 million viewers tuned in to see the usual trio of slightly peculiar doctors encourage the nation’s youth to expose themselves on webcams, netting a 6% share.
A little earlier, ITV decided to take the night off, put its feet up and write-off its entire evening schedule to yet another airing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at 7:30pm (the one with the boy wizard’s distracting feathered indie hair).
2.9 million viewers watched the fourth instalment in the mega-franchise, with most tuning in for that scene in which Twilight‘s Robert Pattinson croaks it, possibly. The Triwizard Tournament-based family fun secured an 11% share for the 2.5 hour running time.
At 7pm, Emmerdale managed to bring in Tuesday’s second biggest audience, with a lowly 5.6 million viewers catching up with the latest slice of rural tranquillity. The latest drama from the plotting, back-stabbing, incestuous little village secured a 31% share and ITV’s biggest audience of the day.
In the end, it was EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm) that stole Tuesday’s top spot with a slightly underwhelming 6.8 million viewers tuning in for the latest crumbs of information about Lucy’s murder (which means there should be a large stockpile of crumbs bigger than Amazon warehouses when the killer is finally revealed in February next year).
Last night’s drama, which saw Lauren Branning attempt to meet up with a mysterious contact of Lucy’s, secured a 36% share, leading a very strong evening for BBC One.
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.