Jamie’s Comfort Food opens up with 1.3m on Channel 4
The dawn of September saw ITV and Channel 4 wrap up one of their recent successes as two different ‘structured reality’ shows came to an end.
ITV aired the finale of the fourth series of emotional reunion show Long Lost Family at 9pm, with the eighth episode seeing Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell once again join forces to bring viewers suitably tearful outcomes.
Last night’s final slice of forced healing and closure took in an audience of 3.8 million viewers and a 17% share.
Also packing up its things was Royal Marines Commando School (9pm) which ended after an eight episode run on Channel 4. The documentary, a mixture of One Born Every Minute‘s wall-mounted cameras and fluffy pieces-to-camera, looked at the everyday difficulties of getting through basic training and saw the mental and physical obstacles taking their toll.
An audience of 1.5 million viewers and a 7% share turned in to see the man tears flow as the remaining recruits finally reached the end of the gruelling training, resulting in Channel 4’s biggest hit of the day.
Over on Channel 5, there was another night of vapid entertainment to be had in the Big Brother house as the ‘famous’ inmates discovered just who was up for eviction. An impressive 1.6 million viewers tuned in for the Celebrity Big Brother (9pm) reveal, netting the channel’s biggest hit with a 7% share.
While many loyal fans of long-running detective show New Tricks (BBC One, 9pm) may have been crying foul of the many cast changes in recent years, the show still had the draw to secure the 9pm slot.
A total of 5.3 million viewers tuned in to see Tamzin Outhwaite lead her crew of crusty coppers in the third episode of the eleventh series, resulting in a 23% share.
At the same time Alex Polizzi returned from the dank netherworld of Channel 5’s The Hotel Inspector to front a new series of Alex Polizzi: The Fixer on BBC Two. And with a title like that, who else would be fit for the job?
944,000 viewers watched as Alex attempted to work her magic on a Devonshire microbrewery and managed to secure a 4% share.
At little earlier at 8pm, professional cheeky chappy family man Jamie Oliver was back fronting a new series, free of preachy messaging and now with 90% more family participation. This was a bit of a walk in the park for the international brand, bringing cameras into his family home and dragging his kids in front of the camera while turning his attention to real nasty food.
The first trip to Essex for Jamie’s Comfort Food (8pm) saw the famous Naked Chef and his son make a marshmallow pavlova and brought in 1.3 million viewers and a 6% share.
Straight afterwards, award-winning film director Richard Ayoade brought us another series of the painfully substandard Gadget Man (8:30pm), with the former IT Crown star turning his shtick up to teeth grinding levels.
Never ever reaching the heights of the Stephen Fry-fronted first series, series three’s second episode saw Ayoade joined by BBC friends Russell Howard and Adam Buxton for some geeky fun, bringing in just over 1 million viewers.
Monday night brought all the big soaps to TV screens with Emmerdale netting 5.9 million viewers at 7pm on ITV, while EastEnders managed 6.6 million at 8pm on BBC One.
But it was a double helping of Coronation Street at 7:30pm and 8:30pm that won the day’s top two spots. Peter Barlow’s latest drink-induced health struggles were watched by 7.3 million viewers, falling to a still-impressive 6.9 million 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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