Channel 4’s latest stab at controversy pulls in 1.7m
Wednesday night gave zoologist George McGavin the chance to traverse the planet one last time as he wrapped up his three-part series, Monkey Planet (BBC One, 9pm).
For the past two weeks the concerned academic has been travelling to all kinds of exotic locations in order to point, look and cuddle with primates of varying intelligence (some are really, really dumb, while a little too many are Planet of the Apes creepy-smart).
Things have been going well for McGavin – two episodes in and the presenter hadn’t yet had his faced ripped off by an irate and unreasonable monkey, a testament to his expertise. That situation didn’t change in last night’s third and final episode as viewers were brought to Indonesia, Thailand and Uganda in another expensive and insightful demonstration of their customs, kindness and brutality.
The series opened with 3.4 million viewers, fell to 2.7 million last week, and ended with just over 3 million viewers (a 14% share) tuning in for yesterday’s final visit to Monkey Planet (misleading a title as it is – the documentary is actually set on Earth).
But it was ITV’s procedural offering that won the 9pm time slot as the eighth series of Law & Order: UK (9pm) continued, with our salt-of-the-earth hero, DS Ronnie Brooks (Bradley Walsh) tussling with some of those evil aristocratic types.
An audience of 4 million viewers watched as a dingy blood-splattered hotel room led Brooks to an upper class family with a closetful of usual secrets. The gruff detective’s toil with society’s elite took the biggest share of the time slot, with 19%.
At the same time, Channel 4 rolled out another documentary with an unnecessarily provocative title: How to Get a Council House (9pm). Much more worthwhile than the sensationalist title would suggest, the programme followed a few of the 4.5 million people currently on the waiting list and the stark realities of everyday life.
1.7 million viewers – the channel’s biggest audience of the day – watched as Channel 4 aired its single-handed attempt at washing away the stains of Benefits Street, resulting in an 8% share. Either way, the content got viewers chatting and generated the most amount of Tweets for a TV show yesterday.
An hour earlier, the never-ending and hard-to-differentiate-from-any-other-episode spectacle of MasterChef (8pm) continued to bring in the crowds, with 4.5 million viewers tuning in for the latest heat. A 22% share was enough to ensure the culinary competitiveness secured the 8pm slot for BBC One.
It seems to be the BBC’s remit to reflect all aspects of society, no matter how unappealing that may seem sometimes. BBC Two’s 8pm offering was a fine example of the Corporation’s pledge as it unleashed scenes of horror onto an unsuspecting public.
Yes, we got to spend some more time with those lovely creatures wot flog houses in Under Offer: Estate Agents on the Job (BBC Two, 8pm). An impressive 1.6 million viewers tuned in to see an array of agents represent the vulgar and outrageous spectrum of house prices across the country, resulting in an 8% share.
However, the horror barely compared to Stephen Mulhern’s smarmy charms on the inexcusable Big Star’s Little Star (ITV, 8pm) – a show which provides a stark answer to the question: is anything sacred in the frantic pursuit of self-promotion?
Not that the viewing public seems to mind; 3.9 million viewers watched as a variety of wannabes and hasbeens dragged their children on national TV to ‘say something cute for mummy’s career’, with the show bagging a 19% share.
Finally, the soap world orbited solely around ITV’s axis last night as Emmerdale and Coronation Street took the midweek top spot.
Charity’s pregnancy dilemma continued apace on Wednesday but unfortunately for the dramatic tension, Coronation Street covered all this two weeks ago. 6.1 million viewers watched as a bounty of rural charm emanated from the TV, resulting in a 34% share.
Straight up afterwards there were plenty of strong words being exchanged on the cobbles as the world’s most miserable pairing, Carla and Peter, had yet another crap night. An audience of 7 million viewers watched as the glamour puss offered old oak, Peter, an ultimatum about his fondness of whiskey.
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.