Channel 4’s latest ‘risky’ doc Living Dolls nets 2m viewers
A brand spanking new week of prime time TV kicked off last night with a bit of sanctioned adultery from the BBC, set to the glamorous backdrop of an exhilarating London commute. The new drama The 7:39 (BBC One, 9pm) won the biggest audience in its time slot.
The ‘romantic’ tale basically consisted of West End darling Sheridan Smith and The Walking Dead‘s resident sociopath David Morrissey locking eyes over a sea of miserable commuters, slowly building up a close rapport, even if they were both just distracting each other from their daily hell.
The now-obligatory moral twist in last night’s story came as it was revealed both parties involved in the journey powered by outrageous flirting were already betrothed to others, providing some perfectly-pitched escapism for battered and broken Monday night audiences.
An impressive 5.7 million viewers watched as the unmoral relationship unfolded in the first of two episodes, easily beating the competition with a relatively low 23% share.
Meanwhile, ITV was celebrating the return of their newly-certified detective franchise, The Bletchley Circle (9pm). Imagine Agents of SHIELD mashed in with a little sprinkle of The Famous Five, the second series opener saw the former code-breakers go all ‘Nancy Drew’ once more as one of their own was put on trial for murder.
The trailblazing, all-female troupe had no problem beating the Nazis in World War II but unfortunately couldn’t fend off David Morrissey’s glad eyes over on the other side. Last night’s sleuthing action matched the popularity of the pilot series’ first episode last September, with a little over 4 million viewers and a 16% share tuning in.
At the same time Channel 4 continued to scrape the barrel, once more providing viewers with benefits-related programming, with the broadcaster hoping to entice outrage calm conversations about hand-out culture.
Benefits Street (9pm) was the first in a five part series documenting the lives of – you guessed it – families living in one of the UK’s most benefits-dependent streets. Calculated simply to infuriate the more vocal sections of the Twittersphere, last night’s inaugural episode showed all aspects of the resident’s lives, from the extremely hard times to the sense of community.
Channel 4’s latest (scientifically designed to provoke) documentary pulled in a relatively impressive 3.6 million viewers and a 14% share, by far the broadcasters biggest hit of the day.
The reactionary dross certainly hit the target with the show generating a total of 51,227 tweets during broadcast, peaking at 1,277 tweets per minute. The negative activity even escalated to the point that the West Midlands Police are now investigating some of the more extreme online reactions.
Similar in design but with slightly more expensive production values, Channel 5 hosted the fourth episode of Celebrity Big Brother (9pm) as charming youngsters Jasmine and Dappy double-handily ensured that this year’s outing is hitting all those new lows producers could have only dreamed about this time last week.
In total, 2 million viewers tuned in the see Dappy, the deluded mini-man, work his magic with the female members of the house, now that he has been removed from Liz Jones’ personal space. An 8% share ensured that the sexual-charged reality show was Channel 5’s biggest show of the day.
Later at 10pm, Channel 4 ensured that the 11% audience share it captured for that time slot were not going to sleep a wink, thanks to Secrets of the Living Dolls (AKA pure unadulterated nightmare fuel).
The second shock documentary in a row for the channel focused on men who took cross-dressing to a bizarre level with latex doll-like masks bringing up emotional memories associated with Doctor Who villains of the ’70s.
Channel 4 were definitely on a roll with 2 million viewers tuning in for the bout of ‘female masking’, as a bartender unveiled his rubberised alter ego to his distressed friends. Secrets of the Living Dolls‘ augmented adventures was the second most tweeted about show of the day, helping to produce 51,657 tweets while it aired.
Earlier on the day, the soaps continued on in good health with Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) netting an above-average 7.5 million viewers (a 33% share). EastEnders (8pm) attempted to hark back to its origins by dealing with some serious issues and brought in 8 million viewers and a 32% share for BBC One.
But of course it was the residents of Weatherfield that won the nation’s hearts as Tina and Peter continued to be inexplicably in love with each other for no obvious reason whatsoever. Logic has never been a part of most of Coronation Street‘s storylines but the latest on/off affair has been really pushing the credibility boat out further than Joe McIntyre drowning in 2010.
The first slice of passion and intrigue brought in the day’s biggest audience at 7:30pm, with 8.9 million viewers (a 38% share) tuning in. Naturally, this slipped to 8.3 million at 8:30pm as Tina’s lust melted into post-naughtiness guilt.
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.