Educating Cardiff tops Twitter and débuts with 1.6m viewers
After failing to educate Essex, Yorkshire and the East End, last night Channel 4 decided to turn their fixed rigged cameras on the disruptive pupils of a welsh school, hoping that maybe some prime time exposure is exactly what they need to settle down.
The first episode of Educating Cardiff (9pm) offered up viewers more of the same, with slightly different accents, netting 1.6 million viewers, an 8% share and topped the day’s TV Twitter chart.
Over on ITV, there was the concluding half of School Swap – The Class Divide (9pm) which saw pupils discover how the other half learn. 1.2 million viewers tuned in to see three students leave the well healed private school and return to Derby, netting a 6% share.
Last night saw ageing BBC One ex-cop drama New Tricks continue to hurtle towards the final stage of its life span, with the fourth episode of the twelfth and final series bringing in the lowest audience yet for the current run.
The second episode ever to completely depend on the new-line up focused on the latest old dog to join the team, Larry Lamb (replacing the last original cast member Dennis Waterman), who investigated a very 80s cold case.
Last night’s blend of cocaine, greed, pinstriped suits and suspicious suicides in the city saw the next generation of UCOS sleuths secure the 9pm slot for BBC One, although there was a slight hollowness to its victory.
The drama about retired cops who simply refuse to layabout and play bowls returned to our screens three weeks ago with 5.3 million viewers and jumped up to 5.7 million for Waterman’s departure the next week.
This fell to 5.4 million viewers last week, with last night’s instalment continuing the downward trend. Tuesday night brought in 5 million viewers and a 24% share, a possible indication that the audience is as chronically tired as New Tricks as it crawls to its final destination.
At the same time Channel 5 descended further down the rabbit hole by airing three and a half hours on welfare-based programming.
Proving that there is life ever further below the bottom of the barrel was The Great Big Benefits Wedding: Live! (9pm) which was exactly what it sounded like and netted 928,000 viewers and a 5% share.
Next up was 12 Years Old and on Benefits (10pm) which secured 606,000 viewers while Benefits and Bypasses: Billion Pound Patients (11pm) was watched by 366,000 viewers.
For the second night in a row BBC Two dedicated an hour to the World’s Busiest Railway (9pm), but the ‘fun’ factual show – in which a collection of BBC presenters wander about an Indian train centre – failed to repeat Monday night’s shock success and was a long way off the top spot.
Falling from Monday’s 2.8 million viewers, last night’s exciting trip to Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus secured 2.1 million viewers and an 11% share.
Afterwards, the BBC’s Indian season continued as comedy ensemble Goodness Gracious Me (10pm) returned for a one-off after last year’s live show reunion. 1.2 million viewers tuned in to see a group on Indian TV executives plan their English season, resulting in a 7% share.
[advert position=”left”]Earlier at 8pm, the employees of Holby City (8pm) continued to mix their professional and personal lives to relatively entertaining effect. While sister show Casualty just experienced an explosive double blow out last weekend, it was business as usual for the spin off.
Even though Casualty managed to bag both Saturday and Sunday’s top spots (outside of news programming) there was no such miracle available for the spin off programme with the latest visit to those upstairs bringing in 4 million viewers and a 21% share.
On BBC Two, Super Powered Owls: Natural World (8pm) bagged just under 2 million viewers and a 10% share while Bargain Fever Britain was watched by 2.2 million viewers and an 11% share.
7pm kicked off an hour-long visit to Emmerdale on ITV as the charming tale of everyday rural folk wot kill each other and netted 5.3 million viewers, a 28% share and managed to eclipse EastEnders , which was only watched by 4.4 million viewers and a 22% share thanks to the clash.
Despite trouncing BBC One’s flagship soap, the extra big helping of countryside backstabbing couldn’t actually manage to take Tuesday’s top spot. That glory fell to Regional News and Weather at 6:30pm on BBC One, with the day’s most disturbing story lines bringing in 5.6 million viewers and a 33% 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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