Last night’s mid-week schedule brought viewers an intense clash of the minds as familiar faces desperately clamoured for the nation’s support and admiration by answering questions intelligently with and searing wit.
But enough about the grim, family friendly, child exploitation show Big Star’s Little Star (8pm) on ITV, because an hour earlier two civil servants took to their soapboxes on BBC Two in order to charm the great unwashed into their way of thinking.
Thankfully, the BBC’s in-house condescending referee, David Dimbleby, was on hand to keep the cerebral blows above the belt as Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and UKIP leader Nigel Farage faced off in The European Union: In or Out? (7pm).
The debate about EU membership came live from Broadcasting House, pulling in a teatime audience of 1.7 million viewers. The deliberation about immigration and regulations, which saw Clegg ‘defeated’ by Farage, netted a 9% share.
But enough of all that real-life nonsense, viewers were simply too distracted by ITV’s frothy soaps to listen to Clegg’s stark warning about reactionary politics. At the same time Emmerdale (7pm) kept 6.1 million viewers preoccupied, resulting in a 32% share.
Straight afterwards at 7:30pm, the familiar cobbles of Coronation Street (ITV) helped the TV viewing nation from straying over to BBC Two, with serial lady-lover Peter Barlow, the North’s finest specimen (apparently), letting the mid-week blues get on top of him. Which is bound to happen when you find out you’ve got both your wife and your mistress pregnant.
Wednesday’s biggest audience, 7.3 million viewers, watched as Barlow reacted in the only reasonable way – by getting absolutely hammered. Last night’s revelry in the Rovers brought in a 9% share.
At 8pm the latest round of MasterChef (BBC One) was watched by 4.7 million viewers, while the aforementioned horror of Big Star’s Little Star managed 3.4 million viewers and a 16% share.
At the same time on Channel 5, there was – for some reason – a documentary that was in danger of glorifying Anders Behring Breivik’s Killing Spree (8pm) in Norway in 2011, netting 586,000 viewers.
Later at 9pm, BBC One tricked viewers into thinking they’d sent a zoologist into an alternative dimension in Monkey Planet. Turns out presenter George McGavin was describing our planet in title, disappointing a healthy audience of 3.4 million viewers and a 16% share.
At the same time on ITV, the country’s answer to Chris Noth, Bradley Walsh, was busy getting personally involved in his latest case on a new episode of Law & Order: UK (ITV, 9pm).
Last night’s localised version of the US multi-franchised schedule-clotter saw Harriet Walter’s DI Natalie Chandler make a surprise return after leaving the show in 2011, bringing with her a load of personal baggage.
Slightly fewer than 4 million viewers watched as the Walsh’s procedural action hero, Ronnie Brooks, took a step off the authorised path to help out his old boss. Brooks’ renegade, loose cannonball ways netted ITV a 19% share and the biggest audience in the prime time slot.
Meanwhile on Channel 4, highly suspect veterinary scientist, Mark Evans, continued on his quest for the body parts of dead celebrities on the black market to prove…very little really. The show, Dead Celebrity DNA (9pm), was deemed such a vital pursuit by Evans that commissioners granted three whole episodes to the murky quest.
After discovering that Elvis may have been predisposed to die from fatty foods, this week saw the very delusional presenter get his paws on some of JFK and Marilyn Monroe’s genetic make-up (from separate DNA samples, of course).
Not only that, Evans (with some help from his scientist friends) also diagnosed the illness that plagued Charles Darwin his whole life by messing around with a stray beard hair that someone had kept in an envelope. For at least 132 years.
Unfortunately, this didn’t really impress last night’s audience, which fell week on week from 808,000 to 675,000 viewers and a 3% share.
A bit later at 10pm, the BBC’s in-joke W1A (BBC Two) seemed to be wearing a bit thin – although the fact that the TV licence fee payer seems to be the butt of the giant in-joke doesn’t help.
1.6 million viewers watched three weeks ago as Ian Fletcher settled into his role as new Head of Values, but last night’s audience fell to 949,000 viewers and a 5% share.
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.
