2.1m tune in for sweaty meltdown on Bear Grylls’ man island
Last night saw the return of Channel 4’s much-scrutinised masculinity contest, The Island with Bear Grylls (9pm), as the poor ‘survivors’ faced starvation and, even more concerning, a level of extreme heat that put the UK’s recent heat wave in its place.
With the bones of last week’s kill well and truly picked, the third episode saw a slight panic set in across the camp as bellies shrunk, tempers swelled and one man-child lost his mind a bit, turning into the island’s very own mystic travelling vagabond for a short dehydrated spell.
Yesterday saw Ryan, a fairly dim-witted 21 year old attention seeker who had never left Stockport before, nearly kill himself by walking off on his own in a huff. Despite reading ‘all of Bear’s books’, the call centre worker failed to bring any water (or, essentially, a TV camera) with him and the merciless heat didn’t do the poor lad any favours.
The show’s biggest audience yet tuned in to see the fellow survivors begrudgingly set up a search mission, while audio from Ryan’s mic revealed how much cringeworthy dialogue an extremely dehydrated brain can produce.
After being accused of both fakery and sexism over the past two weeks, it’s possible that the ‘manning up’ show has grown slightly as a result. Opening with 1.9 million viewers, the third episode saw the audience ‘jump’ to 2.1 million as things promised to get a little primal on the dirty little island of hunger.
Thankfully Bear Grylls’ involvement was kept to a minimum, limited to pre-recorded reactionary monologues where he displays a fine flair for stating the bleedin’ obvious, possibly helping to bring in a 10% share for Channel 4.
The island of crotchety men was also the second most tweeted about show of the day, generating 11,777 tweets during its broadcast.
There was reality drama of another kind over on BBC One as the pampered Nick Knowles transformed yet another house for a deserving family.
DIY SOS (9pm) sets itself apart from other makeover shows by sprinkling in some tragedy each week in order to give a worthy reason for the garish makeover, making the show almost impossible to criticise.
But it was this mixture of cathartic fresh wallpaper and new wheelchair ramps that helped secure the 9pm share for BBC One, with 3.7 million viewers and an 18% share.
At the same time BBC Two was detailing the history of The Battle to Beat Polio (9pm), reeling in 1 million viewers and a 5% share. Surprisingly, Griff Rhys Jones and his special brand of shtick held more appeal for Monday night’s audiences as All New It’ll Be Alright on the Night (9pm) returned for a second series of ITV’s in-house celebrities ‘losing it’ for the cameras.
An audience of 3.1 million viewers watched as Griff spoke at length in between the so-not-worth-the-wait clips of Holly Willoughby forgetting her lines and being all goofy and what not, resulting in a 15% share.
Earlier on in the day – and speckled between the soaps – were glimpses of the premium gardening extravaganza of the social season as the unmitigated madness of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show got under way.
3.3 million viewers tuned in for half an hour to see Alan Titchmarsh barely contain his excitement on BBC One at 7:30pm, while BBC Two’s hour-long visit at 8pm fell to 2.9 million and a 14% share.
A little later at 9pm, it was time for Sky Atlantic to return to Westeros, where it seemed the surviving members of the Stark family were making a little progress at long last. The seventh episode of the spectacular fourth series of Game of Thrones (9pm) detailed just why it would be a bad idea to have a ‘mood door’ around an unstable mentalist, netting 906,000 live viewers who account for around half of the show’s total audience.
Earlier in the day, runt of the soap litter, Emmerdale (no, Hollyoaks doesn’t count) brought in 6 million viewers at 7pm on ITV, while EastEnders treated viewers to more scenes of Ian Beale’s first-class mourning wail.
7 million viewers watched the plans for Lucy’s funeral arrangements, netting a 34% share for the soap.
Meanwhile, Coronation Street was busy skirting time before next week’s big murder, with the biggest audience of the day, 7.5 million viewers, tuning in to see Maria deal with a little mental unwellness, resulting in a 38% share. This fell to 7.4 million viewers for the second visit at 8:30pm.
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.