BBC One’s new crime drama The Driver leads the 9pm slot
Tuesday night saw the BBC offer up an automotive-themed evening across both terrestrial stations, with the launch of a brand new dark drama series starring David Morrissey and a documentary about a motorway that shouldn’t be doing as well as it is.
Fresh from a stint in The Walking Dead, Liverpudlian actor Morrissey jumped into the driving seat for BBC One’s new three-part crime drama at 9pm which told the tale of a desperately bored middle-aged man who gets involved with a local crime boss.
The opening episode of The Driver didn’t have much in the way of competition in the 9pm slot, comfortably bringing in 4.3 million viewers and securing its timeslot with a 21% share.
At the same time, there was nothing but driving over on BBC Two with the third and penultimate episode of an observational documentary about the exciting world of the M6, The Motorway: Life in the Fast Lane (9pm).
Last night the audience was taken for an exciting look at the 450 CCTV cameras along the motorway but somehow didn’t live up to the triumph of the first two episodes, which secured 2.4 million viewers each.
Yesterday’s look at the problems of speeding (which shouldn’t be a surprise as it is subtitled Life in the Fast Lane after all) was watched by 1.9 million viewers and a 9% share.
Meanwhile, ITV and Channel 4’s offerings were brought to you by the theme of saucy sunshine fun, with two factual programmes moving to sunnier locales.
On ITV, there was a look at unconventional holiday romances in I Married the Waiter: Love in the Sun (9pm) which documented the relationships between elderly brits and their young and eager companions.
A total of 1.8 million viewers tuned in to see how the saccharine/doomed relationships turned out, netting a 9% share.
Over on Channel 4, Gordon Ramsay and his unmistakable mush was back for a new original four part series, Ramsay’s Costa del Nightmares (9pm). The programme – unlike anything you’ve seen before – saw the TV personality fly to glamorous Fuengirola to help two ex-pats save their business.
So the same old cobblers really, just this time Ramsay gets to work on his tan. The new venture was watched by 1.1 million viewers and a 5% share.
Earlier on ITV was in the middle of short spin-off series Long Lost Family: What Happened Next (8pm). The supplementary series, bumped down from the original’s 9pm slot, couldn’t quite match the series four opener in July which netted 4.7 million viewers but managed to secure 2.8 million and a 14% share.
Over on BBC One, Holby City (8pm) was watched by its ridged audience of 3.9 million viewers (a 19% share), while Channel 4 saw the brief return of Dogs: Their Secret Lives (8pm). The canine-obsessed show saw presenter Mark Evans deliver the results of the audience survey, netting 1 million viewers, a 5% share and some quality market research for advertisers.
The teatime soap battle saw ITV roll out an hour of Emmerdale at 7pm as Adam faced the reality of his court sentencing. The double episode won Tuesday’s top spot with 5.7 million viewers and a 29% share.
EastEnders aired during the tail-end of ITV’s extra-long potion of rural drama and suffered badly as a result. Despite the surprise reappearance of seriously troubled young adult Ben Mitchell, EastEnders only managed to attract 4.4 million viewers – a 22% 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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