Chegwin’s culinary challenge sees MasterChef net 3.6 million
Thursday night saw BBC One’s long running and unstoppable, slightly-famous-person-cooking show, Celebrity MasterChef (9pm), once again beat off its prime time rivals in an excited flurry of sweat, tears and innuendo.
The biggest audience in the 9pm slot tuned in to see the tenth series continue as a former ‘star’ of The Bill, a talent show dancer, a child from a discontinued boy band and a Keith Chegwin faced off in the kitchen of dreams.
The latest set of competitive culinary challenges secured 3.6 million viewers, with John Torode and Gregg Wallace’s evergreen brand of harsh but friendly shtick netting a 19% share.
This meant, for the third week running, ITV’s Superhospital (9pm) lost out on the biggest share in its timeslot, with the commercial broadcaster’s pimped up version of 24 Hours in A&E still managing to secure a pretty decent slice of the pie.
Attempting to cover all aspects of hospital life – (catering issues, deaths and security matters – the opening episode of the four part series debuted with 2.8 million viewers at the tail end of June, but fell noticeably by the time last week’s episode came along.
Yesterday’s trip to the Royal Derby Hospital mirrored last week’s audience and brought in 2.3 million viewers and a 12% share.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 aired a premise that made Channel 5’s resident reality game show look positively twee, as Married at First Sight (9pm) followed three couples who were matched together by a panel of experts and married at their first meeting.
The bonkers ‘experiment’, which originated in Denmark naturally, saw the three couple united by experts in the fields of psychology, theology and anthropology (they probably randomly pulled names out of a hat of 1,500 applicants) and was watched by 1.6 million viewers and an 8% share.
On BBC Two it was time for the tenth series of Coast (9pm), and while the show may not have run out of rustic seaside locales to shoot, geographical rock star and main presenter Neil Oliver was MIA. 1.9 million viewers tuned in to look at pretty aerial shots of the UK’s holiday coasts, resulting in a 10% share.
On Channel 5, Big Brother: Cash Bomb (9pm) continued to be a thing that wouldn’t go away, bringing in 1.1 million viewers and a 6% share.
Earlier at 8pm, Channel 4 brought back an old favourite in a new, snappier format. Following on from the recent Kevin McCloud’s Escape to the Wild, the faux haughty presenter was back for another mini run, this time making a mix tape of Grand Designs’ top urban hits from the past 15 years.
Grand Designs: Living in the City (8pm) showcased a bounty of skilled builds which made good use of precious space, resulting in a little over 1 million people and a 6% share.
After exhausting the welfare programming well over the past year with Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole, Benefits by the Sea, My Big Fat Benefits Family, among others, last night saw Channel 5 repeat a slightly different angle with the here’s-one-we-made-earlier laziness of Benefits: Too Fat to Work (8pm). 742,000 souls (a 4% share) chose to spend their night gawping at the grim horror show.
Thursday night saw the entire gamut of popular soaps on display, as the holy trinity of OTT action battled it out with highly predictable results.
Emmerdale (ITV) beefed up its chances with an hour-long special at 7pm, in which yet another silly character got involved in yet another agriculturally inspired life threatening set piece.
An audience of 5.1 million viewers tuned in for the sixty minute drama, with frantic scenes of Paddy falling in to a grain pit helping bring in a 33% share.
Afterwards at 8pm, the residents of Coronation Street (ITV) were still reeling from the news of Deirdre Barlow’s death, with Amy and Simon reacting in very different ways. 6 million viewers tuned in to see the bizarre blend of real mourning and OTT drama, netting a 33% share and the day’s biggest audience.
At 8:30pm, EastEnders (BBC One) brought in the day’s second biggest audience as 5.4 million viewers and a 29% share tuned in to see the latest drama from Walford.
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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