BBC One owns Tuesday with EastEnders and The Escape Artist
For the second night in a row BBC One walked away with the 9pm slot with an original scripted drama, once again overshadowing ITV’s reality output on the other side. Tuesday night brought the first episode of The Escape Artist (BBC One, 9pm), a new high profile three part thriller from the creator of Spooks starring the tenth Doctor in the eponymous role.
The tense drama saw David Tennant play a super talented junior barrister who has never lost a case – which sadly turned out to be a bit of a negative superpower when representing one of them unhinged female-targeting serial killers that are so worryingly prevalent in today’s TV schedules.
An audience of 5 million viewers watched as the smarmy law magician’s talents led to some serious consequences, netting a 22% share – the biggest of the time slot. Tennant’s latest role was also attracting interest on Twitter – there were 10,154 related tweets during the shows running time, the second highest of the night.
At the same time, BBC Two wrapped up its Tuesday night power hour of home grown comedy after a six week run with the James Cordon and Matthew Baynton noir-soaked Hitchcockian satire, The Wrong Mans was at 9pm. The show, which has been co-produced by American on-demand streaming service Hulu, has been praised by viewers by its unexpectedly impressive production values.
The opening episode of the mistaken-identity romp pulled in 3 million viewers back in September, but the shows audience has been slowly eroding away over the past six weeks. Last night’s finale saw the hapless council workers attempting to uncover the conspiracy and save their beloved Bracknell once and for all.
The grand finale of the double-crossing double-act action was watched by 1.8 million viewers and an 8% share. Straight up afterwards the final episode of The Sarah Millican Television Programme‘s third series didn’t do quite as well but still managed an audience of 1.3 million viewers and a 6% share.
Meanwhile, ITV offered up real-life thrills with On The Run (9pm) – a look at the police desperately fighting against dwindling resources in order to track down 90,000 people in the UK who are hiding from the law.
Thank God then for the stern might of highly regarded journalist general TV personality Natasha Kaplinsky who was on hand to spell things out for viewers. 1.5 million joined the former Strictly Come Dancing winner as she hunted down a sex offender with the help of a team of armed police offices, resulting in a 7% share.
BBC One also secured the 8pm slot with another happy trip to Holby City. The high pressure environment – which causes beautiful people to stare out of windows in a melancholic fashion while questioning their life choices – pulled in an impressive 4.9 million viewers and a 22% share.
At the same time oon BBC Two most of The Really Wild Show were on grown-up duties for Autumnwatch (8pm). The first thrilling night saw Michaela Strachan and Chris Packham hanging around a darkened field in Lancashire and was watched by 3 million viewers.
Elsewhere, Channel 4’s Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners beat ITV’s digital daters on Looking for Love: A Tonight Special, with 2.1 and 1.5 million viewers, respectively.
In a confusing reversal of fortune, the latest twist in the race for the nation’s second favourite soap saw EastEnders (BBC One) gritting its teeth and delivering a surprise last minute blow to Emmerdale (ITV).
ITV’s rural soap was first into the ring at 7pm as the villagers gathered for the funeral of long-running character Alan Turner. An audience of 6.9 million viewers tuned in to see the fairly unorthodox procession, resulting in a 33% share and the night’s second biggest audience.
Which meant that, miraculously, the dreary goings on in the borough of Walford proved to be Tuesday’s biggest hit. 7.1 million viewers watched as haunted ventriloquist dummy Michael Moon attempted to snuff out Janine Butcher once and for all, which – in fairness – is about as enticing as EastEnders gets.
The murder attempt also helped overshadow Emmerdale on t’web with EastEnders generating 875 tweets per minute.
The soap’s success resulted in an audience share of 32%, which helped BBC One hold on to the night’s biggest audience the entire night.
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.