Michelle Keegan’s drug-fuelled Ordinary Lies jumps to 5.1m
After Monday night’s prime time offerings prove to be a less than spectacular draw for TV audiences, Tuesday saw the masses return to 9pm slot with a mixture of working class drama, a grand South American adventure and a repeat of a dependable police procedural favourite.
At 9pm BBC One saw the return of its down-to-earth high-concept drama Ordinary Lies, which each week sees a different employee of a used car showroom in Manchester struggle to cope when their varyingly awful porky pies get out of hand.
This week provided a slightly more exotic tale than the opening episode which saw comedian Jason Mansford play a man who told a little white lie about his wife expiring, just to keep his job.
Yesterday’s provision of Northern drama focused on former Coronation Street murder victim (last year’s big whodunit storyline that couldn’t even interest the characters) Michelle Keegan fall for the wrong type of bloke who just loved making her stuff bags of cocaine down her gob.
Last week’s opening episode secured a début audience of 4.7 million but last night’s suspicious all-expenses paid trip to the Caribbean managed to out do that.
5.1 million viewers, the biggest 9pm audience, watched as Keegan made a crime against sisterhood and betrayed her bessie mate at customs, netting a 24% share for BBC One.
There was another exciting and sunny sojourn over on BBC Two as two Irish comedians went on a Pan-American road trip seemingly just for the hell of it.
In the vein of The Long Way Round (but without the incurable smugness), the first episode of Dara and Ed’s Great Big Adventure (9pm) saw Dara O Briain and Ed Byrne head down Mexico way for a bit of wrestling and coffee.
The first leg of the three part trip secured 2 million viewers and a 9% share for BBC Two.
Over on Channel 4, there were more stretched canals, nauseous fathers and screaming mothers on the latest One Born Every Minute (9pm), resulting in the broadcaster’s biggest hit of the day with 1.5 million viewers and a 7% share.
Over on Channel 5, Breaking the Law: Bent Coppers looked at corrupt police officers and the colleagues that apprehended them and pulled in 994,000 viewers and a 5% share.
At 10pm Channel 4 launched their latest ‘ground breaking’ intrusive documentary series Teens, which followed a group of assured youngsters over a year as they turned 17. Because what’s more exciting than giving obnoxious and over-confident 16 year olds a national platform on a main broadcaster?
The doc, which presumably only existed to spawn Twitter ‘conversation’, didn’t exactly set the ratings alight with just over half a million viewers and a 3% share tuning in.
Earlier at 8pm, ITV threw up two whole hours of tacky rural homicide in a repeat of Midsomer Murders. Last night, an average audience 2.3 million viewers tuned in for the episode which originally aired back in January 2014.
Dealing with the death of a farmer as a consequence of the powerful combination of truffle oil and an amorous wild boar, the silly-as-usual trip to Midsomer netted an 11% share.
At the same time, Holby City (BBC One, 8pm) was doing much better, with the hour-long medical drama bringing in 4.7 million viewers and a 22% share.
As expected, Tuesday’s soap offerings took the day’s top spots with Emmerdale bringing in 5.8 million viewers at 7pm on ITV. A 30% share tuned in to see Aaron Livesy get a little too much into his physical fitness.
Afterwards, over on BBC One, the writers of EastEnders (7:30pm) had a few more surprises in store for viewers, with a certain storyline attempting to retcon some of the show’s most stable foundations.
The day’s biggest audience watched as Sharon Watts Rickman Mitchell discovered that adoptive dad Dirty Den wasn’t in fact her real dad, with suspicion falling on the old patriarchs of yesteryear.
7 million viewers tuned in to see that Sharon might in fact have a lot more relations on the square than she already has, resulting in a 34% share.
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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