Coast’s Australian jaunt nets BBC Two’s biggest audience
Last night saw BBC One’s trusty culinary performer MasterChef propelled up to the dizzying heights of prime time in a bid to lure in more viewers in the build-up to Friday’s grand finale.
Despite the slight title change, it was pretty much business as usual for MasterChef: The Finals (9pm) as palate-owning professionals John Torode and Gregg Wallace sprinkled more drama into the mix, giving viewers as much bang for their buck as a cooking show can provide.
The first of the final three episodes to move to the prestigious 9pm position didn’t reap huge benefits, with the show only gaining an extra half a million viewers since last Friday’s 8pm helping.
In the end, a little over 5 million viewers tuned in to see one of the six contestants fail to make it out through the gastronomic gauntlet, resulting in a 23% share – the biggest in its time slot.
Over on BBC Two, ‘wacky’ presenter Neil Oliver and the rest of the Coast team were back for an exciting new adventure, far from the damp familiar scenery of home.
After spending an entire five series looking at the UK and Ireland, one focused on Europe (all it needs, apparently) and a further two series in random locations, last night saw the Coast team finally venture further afield.
The next logical step – Coast Australia (BBC Two, 9pm) – featured landscapes so vast and epic it makes you wonder why they even bothered with the UK in the first place. The opening episode focused on one particular spot of coast in the North West of the continent, the Kimberley, and featured a multitude of alien backdrops, providing Wednesday night audience’s with the type of telly HD was made for.
The show returned to its original format after a slight deviation in recent years – it’s basically Countryfile but in really impressive locations and a more interesting line up of presenters. One-of-a-kind-host, Neil Oliver, still looked like he accidentally walked on set from a 80s new romantic music video, but that is half of the show’s USP.
1.7 million viewers watched as Oliver and his collection of desert scarfs wandered about the breath taking planes, wittering distantly to the camera, taking in a 8% share and BBC Two’s biggest audience of the day.
At the same time on ITV, Billy Connolly continued to stare death in the face and attempt to shape the results into light-hearted prime time fare in the second and concluding part of his international odyssey.
Billy Connolly’s Big Send Off (9pm) saw the comedian converse with a terminally ill man who had come to terms with the end, just before seeing exactly what happens to bodies donated to science.
Opening up with 3 million viewers last week, it seemed not everyone was willing to come back for a second slice of a midweek meditation of death. 2.1 million viewers watched the potty mouthed national treasure make us all feel a little bit better about shuffling the mortal coil, resulting in a 10% share.
On Channel 4, the sixth series of 24 Hours in A&E continued, with 1.6 million viewers and a 7% share tuning in.
An hour earlier Anne Robinson and her curtain twitching Watchdog team secured the 8pm slot for BBC One with 4 million viewers and a 20% share.
Over on BBC Two, the sixth episode of Under Offer: Estate Agents (8pm) wrapped up the series with a very poignant moment. The very last line of the show was uttered by an intoxicated estate agent at a Christmas party, “I’d like to think that one day when people think of estate agents they don’t think ‘money-grabbing asshole'”.
In those final few moments, the documentary’s mission statement suddenly became starkly transparent, with the fluffy PR piece netting 1.3 million viewers and a 7% share.
On Big Star’s Little Star on ITV, more semi-recognisable faces dragged their little darlings onto national television just for the hell of it.
3.4 million people (a 17% share) watched as a Westlife, the daughter of an Irish TV Chef and someone who is possible related to EastEnders in some way, all paraded their spawn around, hoping to get some cute sound bites out of them.
Even earlier both of ITV’s soaps performed poorly but still managed to win the day’s top two spots. Emmerdale brought in 5.5 million people and a 33% share at 7pm, while reigning king of soaps Coronation Street (7:30pm) saw its audience fall to 6.8 million viewers and a 36% share.
Later in the night, the third hour of Jack Bauer’s latest super bad day saw an improvement on last week’s two hour début.
It seems the novelty of seeing Bauer frantically run around familiar London landmarks still hasn’t worn off, with 24: Live Another Day (Sky 1, 9pm) brining in 659,000 viewers and becoming the eighth most tweeted about show of the day.
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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