Countryfile continues to win over the weekend
The past weekend’s biggest hit didn’t land until late into Sunday’s evening schedule with the amiable rural excitement of Countryfile (BBC One, 6:45pm) outshining Friday’s soaps and Saturday’s deluge of light entertainment.
This week’s adventure in walking around fields while talking a bit too enthusiastically to camera saw the presenters mix things up a bit with Matt Baker and Ellie Harrison hunting for Pooh in a forest while John Craven visited a junior school.
A whopping 6.9 million viewers allowed themselves to get caught up in the tidal wave of excitement, resulting in the weekend’s biggest audience and a 35% share.
Saying that, there wasn’t much on offer on the other sides as BBC Two decided to flog a dead horse with Gareth Malone’s Great Choir Reunion (7pm), because adding ‘great’ to a title seems to be the nonsensical default for producers these days.
The repeat from last year saw 799,000 viewers tuning in to see Malone round up the stars of his very first youth choir endeavour after 10 years, resulting in a 4% share.
Over on ITV at 7pm, bizarre kiddy misfire Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands came to an end after 12 episodes.
Like Game of Thrones with all the fun stuff stripped out, 4.4 million viewers tuned in back in January to see the ‘bold reimaging’ of the classic poem, falling to 1.3 million and a 7% share.
After being kicked off Saturday’s schedule, this week’s instalment of The Voice UK got its chance to shine at 7:45pm on BBC One, with the fourth-to-last episode milking that magic chemistry between the randomly collected judges, Ricky, Paloma, Boy George and the artist formally known as William James Adams Jr.
A healthy audience of 6.1 million viewers watched as the four judges turned their drama dials all the way up to ‘unbearable’ as they were forced with jettisoning an act each, resulting in a 29% share.
At 9pm, it was time for Julian Fellows’ three-part adaptation of nineteenth century novel Doctor Thorne (ITV) to come to a close. While there was never any danger of the creaking mini-series reaching Downton-like levels of success, the first episode underperformed with just 3.4 million viewers.
Last night brought in 2.6 million viewers as Tom Hollander’s Doctor Thorne wrapped up the tale of scandalous inter-class love, resulting in a 12% share.
But it was Tom Hiddleston’s The Night Manager (BBC One, 9pm) that continued to win over the Sunday evening war, with a little help from ever-present co-star Tom Hollander as caustic Corky, who has been in a ratings battle with himself for three weeks running.
The penultimate episode saw Hollander’s schedule get a little more relaxed, with 6.2 million viewers tuning in to the highly successful adaptation of John le Carré’s beloved novel, resulting in a 28% share.
On BBC Two, Tribes, Predators and Me saw wildlife filmmaker Gordon Buchanan hang out with the Waorani tribe in the Amazon Jungle, providing a bit of Sunday night escapism for 1.8 million viewers and an 8% share.
Over on Channel 4, the second episode of Indian Summers‘ second series saw the drama and revolution turn up a notch, but still only managed to bag a small audience of 663,000 viewers and a 3% share.
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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