Channel 4’s epic New Worlds beaten by BBC Three’s Hair
Tuesday night delivered a sullen line-up of intense and broody dramas from BBC One and Channel 4, while ITV offered up a bit of dependable football thrown in for good measure.
At 9pm on BBC One, it was time to return to the unforgiving landscape of Shetland as DI Jimmy Perez attempted to wrap up another series of gruesome murders in the second of a two part story.
The fourth episode of the second series brought the discovery of yet another murdered, bearded, outdoorsy type (Shetland‘s got plenty to spare apparently) as Perez sniffed out a conspiracy.
Perhaps that should be the least of the morose detective’s worries – it looks like the case of the eroding audience should be more of a concern. The second series debuted a few weeks ago with a healthy audience of 5.2 million but last week was down to 4.5, even if it did manage to secure its time slot.
Last night’s slice of greyed-out weathered fun was watched by 4.2 million viewers. Despite managing a 18% share, it was the football on ITV that brought in the bigger audience, with Shetland only managing to secure the last 15 minutes of its 9pm slot.
Speaking of dead beardy craggy types – Channel 4’s New Worlds was full of ’em! The epic new four-part drama gathered together a few familiar hirsute faces from recent cult dramas such as The Fall and Game of Thrones and lobbed them together for this sequel to 2008’s period drama The Devil’s Whore.
668,000 viewers tuned in for over an hour of historical world building, which kicked things off in 1680s Massachusetts, resulting in a 3% share.
Unfortunately, despite the exquisitely detailed sets, the beautiful cinematography and the refined script, a dirt-cheap reality show over on BBC’s digital youth channel did slightly better at capturing the attention of viewers.
The final of the Steve Jones-presented Hair (BBC Three, 9pm) saw the three remaining barnet architects snip, roll and style their way to be crowned Britain’s Best Amateur Stylist. An audience of 902,000 viewers tuned in for the grand finale, securing a 4% share and the channel’s biggest audience.
Last night also saw The Great British Sewing Bee (BBC Two) bumped back down to its usual 8pm slot after momentarily living the high life in the prestigious prime time position last week.
Not that it made much difference – in fact, it seemed to have helped. A week on week rise of 200,000 helped the penultimate episode of the show’s second series bring in a total of 2.8 million viewers and a 12% share.
Doing much, much better was Holby City (8pm) over on BBC One. Alongside its originator Casualty, the medical drama is the epitome of sturdy schedule security, bringing in 4.4 million viewers and a 19% share.
Most of the evening schedule was overshadowed by the latest game in the Live UEFA Champions League (7:30pm) over on ITV. After 15 minutes of warm up, the Manchester United v Bayern Munich game kicked off at 7:45pm with the entire event bringing in an average audience of 5.9 million viewers and a 26% share.
But the real action lay in the second half with Vidic scoring in the 58th minute and Schweinsteiger equalizing in the 66th. The audience peaked at the beginning of the second half, with 7.6 million viewers helping the game secure the biggest audience share for the majority of its running time.
Earlier on in the day Emmerdale (7pm) secured Tuesday’s third biggest audience for ITV. The latest escapade in small-town relations saw the community’s latest murderer, Tinkerbelle Dingle (surely, at this stage, the water supply to the village needs looking at), released on bail, as she really, really didn’t mean to kill her best friend.
A slightly lower than usual audience of 5.6 million viewers watched as the 16 year old struggled to deal with her recent life choices, resulting in a 31% share.
But it was EastEnders, which went out straight afterwards at 7:30pm that celebrated Tuesday’s ultimate accolade, lording it up without any episodes of Coronation Street to put it in its place.
Last night’s visit to sunny Walford saw the soap edging closer to the actual reality of today’s East End, even including the word ‘hipster’ twice – now they’ve broken through the sell aware fourth wall, things might never be the same again.
6.4 million viewers tuned in to the crazy youth of E20 help themselves to free alcohol in Sharon’s new cocktail bar (they even drank from jam jars like cool young people do in real life!), securing a 32% share and the biggest audience of the day.
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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.