BBC One’s Last Tango wins Sunday’s battle of oldie drama
In a surprise outcome, Saturday saw BBC One’s confuddling game show Pointless Celebrities run away with the day’s biggest audience, with an impressive 29% share tuning in for the reverse Family Fortunes at 6pm.
While the show has been building steadily in popularity since its début on BBC Two in 2009, this weekend’s success is either due to the winning signature chemistry between hosts Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman, or simply because of the noticeable vacuum of anything remotely decent to watch that evening.
In total, Armstrong and Osmans’s wining banter pulled in 5.7 million viewers while somewhere in the background some vaguely familiar faces attempted to give the most obscure answers to silly questions.
Even less thrilling was the fact BBC News took second place at 10pm on BBC One with an audience of 4.9 million and a 25% share, while Saturday night stable Casualty (BBC One, 9:05pm) came in third with 4.5 million viewers and a 21% share.
Earlier at 7pm, viewers were treated to a mini talent show as members of the public covered ol blue eyes’ classics in Frank Sinatra: Our Way (BBC One). 4.2 million viewers watched as suspect panellists Joan Collins and Rufus Hound cast their judgement, netting a 21% share.
8:30pm on ITV brought the only non-BBC One show to make it into the top ten, as the seventh series of spray tanned ‘sassy’ fun Take Me Out got under way.
Just 3 million viewers watched as Paddy McGuinness turned his charisma dial all the way up to ‘barely noticeable’, helping secure a 14% share, resulting in eighth place and ITV’s top rated show of the day.
Elsewhere, there was still a hint of festive air in the schedules with films taking up a large chunk of the terrestrial channels’ Saturday offerings. Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, a film about Emma Thompson getting a makeover, was watched by 2.3 million viewers and a 12% share on ITV at 6:15pm.
In a similar vein (but not quite) Glenn Close also jumped under the prosthetics to play the titular Albert Nobbs (BBC Two, 9pm), a story of a woman secretly living as a man in 19th century Dublin. According to BARB, exactly 1 million viewers tuned in to the Downton-esque tale of class division and secrets, netting a 5% share.
Slightly less highbrow was the Las Vegas-based shenanigans of The Hangover on ITV at 9:30pm, with the drunken desert debauchery netting 2.4 million and a 13% share.
Meanwhile on Channel 4, 1.5 million viewers tuned in to see the origin of Liam Neeson’s rebirth as a tooth-grindingly angry action man in Taken (9pm), resulting in a 7% share.
Sunday’s big player also belonged to BBC One as its popular revival of the critically-toxic Still Open All Hours secured a 27% share at 7:30pm. It’s as if the corporation was jealous of ITV’s zombified Birds of a Feather, whose pungent reanimated corpse also proved popular with the masses.
The third episode of the old-school sitcom, which sees David Jason reprise his role of Granville, was watched by 6.1 million viewers, proving flogging dead horses can indeed be rewarding.
At 5:15pm, MOTD Live (BBC One) brought in 5.4 million viewers with the Arsenal v Hull match, while this week’s exhilarating adventure with the Countryfile (BBC One, 8pm) gang bagged 5.2 million viewers.
Later on, drama was on the menu as ITV kicked off another short series of paranoia and espionage-based thrills in Foyle’s War (8pm). The ninth series of mini TV films saw MI5’s top man deal with the murder of a professor in London, with the first two-hour event netting 4.7 million viewers and a 20% share.
There was more elderly drama available on BBC One as the amorous union continued to propel Alan and Celia’s adventures in the third series of Last Tango in Halifax (9pm).
Written by Happy Valley‘s Sally Wainwright with, sadly, fewer moments of shocking violence, last night saw Celia attempt to cope with her daughter’s lesbian wedding and all these other new-fangled modern things.
An audience share of 22% watched as the big day brought with it an avalanche of drama, resulting in 5.3 million viewers and the biggest audience in the 9pm slot.
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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