England’s Six Nations victory peaks at 6.5m on BBC One

This past weekend saw Channel 4’s lo-fi yet bonafide hit, Gogglebox, finally join the Friday night prime time line-up after bouncing around the broadcaster’s schedule for the first two series.

Friday night brought viewers the first episode of the third series and saw all of the nation’s favourite telly-commentators return – even with certain head-shattering high-pitched teenagers returning.

The show – which treats us to the opinions of select families and friends from around the country (it’s basically Twitter for the chronologically challenged) – would appear to have benefited from the change of time. The first episode, which went out at 10pm on a Thursday evening last year, brought in 732,000 viewers, while the opening episode of the second series – which moved to a Wednesday – captured a more impressive 1.3 million viewers.

Friday night’s fresh slice of cleverly edited sharp opinion was watched by 2.3 million viewers – meaning a whole year after launch (yes, really), many retweets and some actual old-school conversation (it used to be called word-of-mouth, clearly indicating the primal form of communication involved) it seems that Gogglebox and its array of carefully selected representatives are finally ready for the mainstream close-ups.

Naturally, the real-life The Royale Family experience was the most tweeted about show of the day – generating 46,549 tweets throughout its broadcast and an 11% audience share.

Meanwhile the third episode of ITV’s soft as Brie comedy, Edge of Heaven, (9pm) didn’t exactly set the prime time slot alight and only managed to capture the attention of 1.3 million viewers and a 6% share.

But it was wiggly-haired mystery man Jonathan Creek (BBC One, 9pm) that walked away with the Friday night crown, netting 5.6 million viewers with the second episode of the first series in over a decade. While this was 700,000 people lower than last week’s big return, a 26% share and Friday’s prime time crown would suggest there’s legs in the hoaky format yet.

Earlier in the evening the three big soaps were enjoying their moment in the sun with the first trip to Coronation Street (ITV) at 7:30pm bringing in Friday’s biggest audience with 7.6 million viewers. Unfortunately, the northern soap didn’t have the stamina to keep the tension up, with the second visit slipping to 6.5 million at 8:30pm.

This allowed EastEnders (BBC One) to swoop in at 8pm, netting the day’s silver crown with 6.6 million viewers, while rival soap Emmerdale (ITV) was watched by 6.4 million at 7pm.

Saturday afternoon brought drama of a different kind as BBC One gave us two games from the Six Nations Rugby, kicking off with Ireland v Italy at 2pm. An audience of 2.2 million viewers stayed tuned for the entire event as Ireland destroyed their Italian opponents in a thrilling 46-7 victory.

Scotland squared up against France a little later at 4:45pm, with 3.6 million tuning in to see France scraping through a narrow 17-19 victory, resulting in a 22% share.

The battle continued at 7pm on BBC One as the gladiators of The Voice UK (BBC One, 7pm) did their little vocal warm-ups in order to slay the competition in the Battle Rounds  – because anything sounds more exciting than ‘yet another 2.5 hours of sing-offs’ round.

6.7 million viewers watched as Kylie, Will.i.am and the rest of the memorable crew made lots of overwrought facial expressions just to convey how ‘exciting’ everything was.

The smoke and mirrors magic seems to be doing the trick though – the singing competition grabbed Saturday’s biggest audience and was the most talked about programme of the day on Twitter.

In Saturday’s second place was northern couple Anthony and Declan, who were back for another bout of controlled chaos with their own special brand of Morrison’s-sponsored anarchy. Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway (ITV, 7pm) lost out on the top spot by just 46,000 viewers but still managed 6.7 million and a 29% share.

There was more Six Nations Rugby on Sunday at 2:30pm to help blow the cobwebs off, as England comfortably beat Wales, netting an impressive 4.7 million viewers and a 36% share. The final moments of the match saw the audience peak at 6.5 million viewers as Stuart Lancaster’s team hammered the victory home.

A little later on, Countryfile (BBC One, 7pm) helped calm the nation down, with 5.7 million viewers and a 25% share watching the collective comedown.

Over on ITV, the final ever episode of Dancing on Ice (7pm) finally happened as little Ray Quinn skated away with the top prize, beating the likes of Mark Fowler from EastEnders. 5.9 million watched as the minute panto-frequenter’s journey came to a close, resulting in a 23% share.

At 8pm, the finale of Call the Midwife (BBC One) broke a few hearts but still held on to its massive following. The final adventures (for now) of those crazy gals at Nonnatus House pulled in 8.2 million viewers and a 29% share, proving to be the weekend’s biggest hit.

At the same time, BBC Two decided to eventually get into the spirit of the weekend with Top Gear Burma Special (8pm). 5.4 million viewers tuned in to see May, Hammond and Clarkson respect local customs and generally tone their obnoxious personalities down a notch. Not really. But it did earn a 19% share.

Finally, 9pm brought the final battle of the weekend as The Musketeers (9pm) pranced in circles around Mr Selfridge (ITV) and his fetching cumerbands. 4.7 million viewers watched the latest swashbuckling adventure, while ITV’s retail drama came in next place with 4.6 million viewers.

But when you’re both beaten by Countryfile, what does it really matter?

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.