Gotham swoops on to C5 while New Tricks beat Grantchester
Monday night’s 9pm time slot offered up a night of back-to-back televisual sleuthing, with an ailing old favourite fighting for attention in a schedule littered with fresh twists on the police procedural.
BBC One’s New Tricks has been under heavy scrutiny over the past two years – since most of the original cast abandoned ship, the cold case show hasn’t been the sure-fire hit it once was.
The previous series opened with 7.5 million viewers in July 2013, falling to an average of around the 4.5 million mark a year later as old characters were replaced with some ‘fresh’ faces.
Last week saw the increasingly Nicholas Lyndhurst-focused show overshadowed by ITV’s new and reassuringly gentle-crime show Grantchester, spelling bad very news for the Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad.
Last night’s sixty minute slice of helping elderly people feel useful perhaps proved that there is life in the old dogs yet (token female Tamzin Outhwaite notwithstanding) with the latests episode fighting back against twee vicars on the other side.
4.7 million viewers tuned in to see Delboy’s Dan Griffin investigate the death of a friend (who himself was investigating some old murder because this is New Tricks) netting a 21% share – the biggest audience in the 9pm slot.
Which wasn’t good news for last Monday’s star débutante, Grantchester (9pm), which fell by -19% week on week. The tale of a brooding and handsome vicar and a cantankerous cop solving crimes in 1950 Cambridgeshire brought in an audience of 5.2 million last week.
The second episode, in which the handsome vicar tried to catch a murderer at an engagement party, saw viewers drop to 4.2 million while netting a 19% share.
Over on Channel 4, there was a completely different approach to the law, with the rigged camera documentary 24 Hours in Police Custody (9pm) giving viewers an as-close-to-reality look at crime solving as possible.
The third episode of the show that gives viewers an all-access look at the Bedfordshire Police went to some dark places, as Luton Police Station investigated sexual crimes against children. An audience of 1.6 million viewers decided to spend their Monday night on the hunt, providing the channel’s biggest hit with a 7% share.
Proving that living in the golden age of geekdom might result in spreading the superhero mythos a bit thin was prequel series Gotham (9pm) over on Channel 5. A police procedural with a twist, the first instalment saw a young James Gordon investigate the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents and secured an impressive 1.7 million viewers for the channel, resulting in an 8% share.
Thankfully BBC Two gave telly watchers an alternative from all the murdering and line-of inquiries with The Kitchen (9pm), although the observational show might be enough to encourage a spout of homicide.
889,000 watched as different families from all over the country attempted to represent all the prime time demographics, resulting in a 4% share.
Meanwhile on FOX, it was finally time for the return of the relentlessly trying The Walking Dead (9pm) as the shrinking band of survivors hopped on a badly broken leg from one horrific situation to the next.
An audience of 702,000 watched as Rick and his group of mentally and physically fragile group completely lost it while trying to escape their captors. An audience share of 3% watched as the Terminus sanctuary turned out to be anything but.
Earlier in the day 6.5 million viewers watched as village pariah Charity was ostracised by the Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) community.
Later EastEnders brought in an impressive 7.2 million viewers to BBC One at 8pm as Peter found out where his father Ian was in the powerful embrace of a crack whore the night Lucy died, resulting in a 32% share.
But ITV won the night’s top spots as a double Coronation Street (7:30pm and 8:30pm) dealt with Peter Barlow’s trial. 7.7 million viewers (36% share) watched as Steve McDonald dropped his mate in it, falling to 7.4 million viewers and a 33% share an hour later.
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.
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