Ian Beale’s tears continue to strike gold for BBC One
Last night saw BBC One bring a procession of misery and grim histrionics to teatime viewers as the haggard and long-suffering characters in EastEnders (8pm) hit terrifying lows as the show peaked to new heights.
So far, 2014 has treated the 29 year old soap extremely well, attracting more solid ratings than it managed last year. Partially reinvigorated due to the arrival of the fresh faced Carter family and the steady return of old faces, recently the London-based soap has won plaudits for tackling the death of a major character in a long and drawn-out Broadchurch-style reveal.
Tuesday once again saw the soap reveal in the protracted (for the soap world) grief of the Beale family, with last night’s fun family drama dedicating an entire hour to Lucy Beale’s typically jolly funeral.
The outpouring of emotion and sexual secret (traditional at a fictional East End funeral, it would seem) brought in the day’s biggest audience, with a whopping 7.9 million viewers tuning in to see aged sleaze Max Branning get caught out by a hysterical Ian Beale, who threw his daughter’s secret lover out of the church with the usual level of high drama.
Despite the fact Lucy’s killer won’t be revealed until EastEnders‘ 30th anniversary in February of next year, last night’s feature-length reveal secured an impressive 30% share and generated 50,267 tweets, making it the most tweeted show of the day.
An hour earlier, ITV had its own hour long special up its sleeve but fell short of matching BBC One’s slow burning success. Yesterday’s trip to sunny Emmerdale (7pm), which saw the charming Charity Macey blame her innocent and brand new sister-in-law for making her lose her baby.
An audience of 6.1 million viewers tuned in to watch the nasty scam unfold, resulting in a 33% audience share and the day’s second biggest hit.
Later at 9pm, BBC One’s impressive street-level crime drama Happy Valley continued to make an EastEnders funeral look like a right told panto as Sarah Lancashire’s Sergeant Cawood bottled up her grief and got on with the job.
Hot on the hunt for her colleague’s killer, the fourth episode of the West Yorkshire drama saw Cawood follow leads a little too close to home. The small town drama, based around a low level kidnapping gone horribly wrong, improved slightly on last week’s audience, bringing in 5.8 million viewers.
For the fourth week in a row, the bruised and weathered Cawood and her struggles, both personal and professional, secured the 9pm slot for BBC One with a 27% share.
Over on BBC Two, it was time to wave goodbye to those salt-of the-earth folks in Watermen: A Dirty Business (9pm) a documentary looking at people simply doing their jobs with good humour. An audience of 1.7 million viewers watched the sixth and final episode as two brave employees tackled a congealed mass of fat that weighed 100 tons, resulting in an 8% share.
Mr Drew’s School for Boys was finally closing its doors at 9pm on Channel 4 as the former Educating Essex teacher was ready to release his newly conditioned and calm pupils into the public. The ratings over the past four weeks mightn’t have been spectacular but they were consistent.
Last night another 1.3 million viewers tuned in to see the former feral students go camping with Mr Drew, before releasing them back into their natural habitats. The patient educator and the 11 young tearaways brought in Channel 4’s biggest audience of the day with a 6% share.
Post Emmerdale, ITV’s tactic was to throw up repeat of the young Inspector Morse chronicles, Endeavour (8pm), onto viewers screen. The two hour event from April of last year saw young Morse rally against his superiors in order to bring a killer to justice. The repeat failed to capture a massive audience however, securing just over 2 million viewers and a 9% 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.
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