Capaldi’s Doctor Who début secures 6.8m and tops Twitter
Saturday night saw Peter Capaldi’s tenure as Doctor Who (BBC One, 7:50pm) kick off with some encouraging results as the TARDIS took flight for another run of time-travelling family-friendly hokum.
Replacing Matt Smith’s boyish incarnation, the craggy faced Scotsman spent most of the episode getting used to his new look as the twelfth/thirteenth Doctor dealt with a tyrannosaurus rex in Victorian London for the début of the eighth/thirty-forth series (depends on who you ask, time travel makes continuity kind of tricky).
Despite the much touted dark leanings of the new series, 6.8 million viewers tuned in to see the fresh start, only to find out that it’s still indeed a children’s TV show. The Doctor’s attempts to regain his painfully plucky assistant’s trust netted the biggest audience of the day with a 33% share.
Not only that, the latest regeneration topped SecondSync’s twitter ranking with the show generating a whopping 134,990 tweets during broadcast.
There wasn’t much else to compete with Capaldi’s unrelenting histrionics that evening, with Casualty securing 4.2 million viewers (a 21% share) on BBC One at 9:15pm, while the latest episode of Tumble brought in 3.3 million at 6:30pm on the same channel.
In comparison, ITV’s biggest hit of the day was the Ben Shephard-fronted Tipping Point: Lucky Stars (7:45pm), a celebrity focused game show based around coin pushing machines found in archaic arcades. 3.2 million viewers (a 16% share) joined in on the fun.
Bank Holiday Sunday brought a slight fall in viewers, with the day’s top show, BBC News (BBC One, 10pm), bringing in just over 5 million viewers. In fact, BBC One was responsible for the day’s top seven shows with the exciting Sunday rural calm of Countryfile bagging 4.7 million viewers at 8pm.
BBC One’s 9pm offering – the grim historical northern experience that is The Village – was watched by 3.5 million viewers and an 18% share, while earlier the three hour spectacle of Formula 1: The Belgian Grand Prix (BBC One, 12:15pm) netted 2.4 million.
ITV’s biggest player of the day was the 6:30pm regional ITV News which took in 2.3 million viewers followed by the latest thrilling chapter of Come On Down! The Game Show Story at 7pm. 2.3 million viewers watched Bradley Walsh continue his stroll through the archives, resulting in an unlucky 13% share.
Despite the bank holiday, Monday’s schedule took on an air of normalcy with soaps making up the four most popular shows. There was another timely stunt on Coronation Street (ITV) to help the soap net the top two spots, with scenes of Tyrone crashing through an attic space bringing in a little under 7 million viewers at 7:30pm.
The aftermath and minimalist rescue attempt (this was no tram crash) at 8:30pm was watched by 6.4 million viewers.
Over on BBC One, Mick Carter and his trouble and strife (that’s Danny Dyer for ‘wife’) decided to recreate the Notting Hill carnival in the Queen Vic on EastEnders at 8pm, bringing in 6.2 million viewers, while Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) came in fourth with a little under 6 million.
The latest series of BBC One’s New Tricks secured the 9pm slot, with 5.8 million viewers catching up with the dusty detectives’ latest cold case, resulting in a 24% share.
Despite this, the penultimate episode of Long Lost Family‘s (ITV, 9pm) fourth series saw the show hold onto its audience, with 3.3 million and a 13% share tuning in for the heavy handed reunions.
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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