EastEnders and Ordinary lies leads a strong night for BBC One
BBC One’s working class drama about everyday people caught up in absurd circumstances of their own making, Ordinary Lies (9pm) once again walked away with Tuesday’s biggest 9pm audience, after being defeated by ITV’s football coverage a week previously.
This week’s trip to Manchester’s most dysfunctional car showroom (seriously, someone needs to have a proper talk with the HR department) focused on mechanic Rick (Shazad Latif), a cheeky chappy with some martial/homelessness issues.
The morally clueless colleagues certainly deliver the drama – the series kicked off with Jason Manford lying about his wife being dead, then moved on to Michelle Keegan attempting to smuggle some drugs in her gullet, with last week seeing Sally Lindsay indulging in a saucy romp with a stranger.
Opening up with 4.7 million viewers before jumping to 5.1 million for Keegan’s drug-fuelled holiday, last week brought in the show’s smallest audience with yesterday’s instalment matching it exactly.
4.5 million viewers tuned in to see Rick’s boss, played by Max Beesley, invite the wayward lad into his home only for the mechanic to develop a worryingly close relationship with his boss’s young daughter.
A 22% share meant that Ordinary Lies once again secured Tuesday night’s 9pm slot for BBC One.
On BBC Two, Dara and Ed’s Great Big Adventure (9pm) came to a close after three instalments, with scenes of the two lads having The Craic ™ on the final leg of the South American trip, bringing in 1.8 million viewers and a 8% share.
At the same time on Channel 4, the storylines continued to fly out faster than the midwives could catch them on the latest episode of One Born Every Minute (9pm), as yet more women gave birth to tiny people, netting 1.5 million viewers and a 7% share.
Channel 5 was back slating the financially needy at 9pm, the twist this time being that the documentary’s subjects were also deathly ill. Benefits & Bypasses: Billion Pound Patients (9pm), the latest barrel-scraping judgemental welfare focused-show, was watched by 1 million viewers and a 5% share.
9pm also saw a new series of Stacey Dooley Investigates kick off on BBC Three, with the Luton lass returning for a brand new series of youth-skewed fact-finding fun, with the first episode looking at Meth and Madness in Mexico. 454,000 youngsters tuned in to see the former retail assistant get caught up in a stand-off with a cartel, netting a 2% share.
A repeat of Midsomer Murders (8pm) took up ITV’s evening schedule, with the two hour exercise in medieval-inspired homicide bringing in 2.1 million and an 11% share.
Holby City (8pm) fared a little better on BBC One around the same time with 4.5 million viewers and a 22% share catching up with the latest antiseptic tinged drama.
At the same time Back in Time for Dinner (BBC Two, 8pm) was watched by 2.7 million viewers while Burger Bar to Gourmet Star (8pm) secured 842,000 viewers on Channel 4 and Channel 5’s Britain’s Horror Homes (8pm) brought in 980,000 viewers.
At 7pm on Emmerdale, Aaron Livesy took a serious tumble down some sort of gorge while out running, just because it was a Tuesday. 5.3 million viewers tuned in to see the accident unfold, resulting in a 30% share.
But it was the sight of an 80 year old retired fish monger dying that secured yesterday’s biggest audience as Stan Carter prepared to meet his maker on EastEnders (7:30pm). 6.5 million viewers watched as the short lived patriarch on the Square made plans to marry antiquated totty Cora, resulting in a 34% 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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