Birds of a Feather raised from the dead, nabs 7.5m for ITV
In a time when chasing nostalgic ratings is easier than actually bothering to come up with original and creative ideas, last night viewers were treated to yet another revival of a beloved sitcom from yesteryear.
Coming fresh on the heels of Still Open All Hours’ Boxing Day success (just one of the many old formats given a fresh lick of paint in recent months), Thursday night saw viewers return to Chigwell to welcome back the frumpy and grumpy Rackman sisters, Sharon and Tracey. In the 16 years since Birds of a Feather (ITV, 8:30pm) was last on our screens, the sitcom has been touring the nation and giving die-hard fans some kind of fix.
After being recently rejected by the BBC, commercial broadcaster ITV jumped on board a Netflix-style revival – finally giving viewers that much anticipated tenth series. Most surprising of all, the risk seems to have paid off.
The broad and dated – but comfortable – comedy stylings of the Sisters Grim and their suspiciously nimble neighbour Doreen sent Thursday night’s audience onto the Twitterphere to share their joy/utter horror of the unholy resurrection.
Throughout it’s mercifully short half an hour running, Birds of a Feather generated just over 12,000 tweets, resulting in a peak of 560 tweets a minute.
In total, a whopping 7.5 million viewers tuned in to see the old gang come back together for more Essex stereotype-based fun that we apparently were so fond of back in the 90s. With an impressive 31% share and the second biggest audience of the day, ITV’s rough restoration on the unfashionable comedy could open the door for many more easy revivals.
Later in the 9pm slot, BBC One saw the return of more weathered faces as Silent Witness returned for a 17th series. An audience of 6.1 million viewers tuned in to see Dr Nikki return to pout and look mystified at the same time, all the while trying to catch the latest woman-bothering psychopath on the streets of London.
The first part of the eternally popular crime procedural nabbed a 25% share and won the 9pm slot, narrowly beating ITV’s new series of Benidorm (9pm). The sun-soaked sixth series of working class folk misbehaving abroad was watched by a little under 6 million viewers, resulting in a 24% share.
At the same time, Channel 4 just couldn’t stop pillaging its holy grail of easy TV – well, apart from all those wall-mounted observational documentaries the broadcaster seems to be obsessed with. Last night lucky viewers were brought along on My Big Fat Gypsy Holiday (9pm).
1.2 million viewers (a 5% share) tagged along for drunken chaos in Tenerife, a tacky honeymoon in Mexico and a religious pilgrimage to Bosnia (just to balance things out – God forbid Channel 4 would paint its golden goose in an unflattering light).
Earlier on in the day a supersized helping of rural drama Emmerdale (ITV) was watched by 7 million viewers at 7pm, building to 7.1 million for the 8pm showing which is usually unheard of for a soap double bill.
Stuck in between over on BBC One was the day’s trip to Walford as EastEnders‘ (7:30pm) last great hope for redemptive success, Danny Dyer, continued to huff and puff his way around the square, acting like an all-round proper geeeeezer.
Thursday’s biggest audience tuned in to see the Carter family truly earn their keep as they loaded up the responsibility of future storylines on their backs, netting 7.5 million viewers and a 33% share.
Up against the double threat of Emmerdale and Birds of a Feather at 8pm was BBC One’s bizarre secret weapon. Dolphins – Spy in the Pod (from the makers of Penguins – Spy in the Huddle, naturally) saw evil humans infiltrate a pod of Dolphins through a manner of variously whacky spybots).
The first of two episodes brought in an impressive 4.9 million viewers as the poor dolphins were given heart attacks as result of the increasingly disturbing looking robots, resulting in a 20% 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.