Latest upsetting Panorma exposé watched by 2.9m
Last night BBC One’s Panorama (9pm) helped traumatise the midweek prime time audience with its latest shocking expose on some particularly worrying care facilities.
Behind Closed Doors: Elderly Care Exposed looked at two care homes, using undercover reporting to unearth some disturbing results.
At first the miserable scenes of neglect and mistreatment of the aged residents didn’t do a great job of pulling in the huge audience to BBC One’s prime time slot but did manage to secure the biggest audience share for the final fifteen minutes.
An average audience of 2.9 million viewers stayed tuned for the entire hour of seriously uncomfortable telly, netting a 13% share.
Over on ITV, there was an hour of some fictional procedural justice being dispensed, just to balance things out. But it seemed even viewers of ITV couldn’t escape nasty surprises as, instead of the series eight finale of Law & Order: UK (9pm), fans were instead treated to a repeat of an episode from 2011.
While the concluding episode was pulled from the schedule due to extremely vague similarities with a recent tragic incident in a Leeds school, the repeat reunited Bradley Walsh’s DS Brooks wth his old partner, Jamie Bamber’s DS Devlin.
The ‘classic’ episode from 2011 revolved around dodgy practises in a London Hospital (there is actually no escape) and attracted an audience of 3.6 million viewers. A 16% audience share meant that for 45 minutes Law & Order: UK had the biggest share before being defeated by Panorama in the final quarter.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 was busy quietly wrapping up its last go on the contrived merry-go-round of controversy, How to Get a Council House (9pm). Even though there’s plenty of fuel for both sides of the debate, post-Benefit Street audiences seem to be exhausted by the whole experience.
The programme debuted just three weeks ago with 1.7 million viewers and was greeted with a rather underwhelmed response. This might have something to do with the fact the documentary seemed slightly less exploitative, instead focusing on real people desperately in need of shelter.
The finale of How to Get a Council House, featuring the usual mixture of the needy and delusionally choosy was Channel 4’s biggest hit of the day, despite a 20% drop in audience since the first episode.
In total, 1.4 million viewers tuned in to be subtly told that everyone was at little bit at fault for Tower Hamlets’ current housing crisis, resulting in a 6% share.
Thankfully, at the same time, BBC Two was focusing on some positive aspects of British life. Unfortunately they took place in the 17th century.
The thinking woman’s premium crumpet, Dan Snow, was on hand to guide viewers through the history of trading and expansion in The Birth of Empire: The East India Company (9pm). The first of two episodes explored how the trading led to powerful posturing on the other side of the Indian Ocean and was watched by 1.9 million viewers and a 9% share.
Earlier on BBC One, MasterChef (8pm) continued to entertain the masses. After many, many weeks of repeating the initial challenges, the contestants have finally been whittled down to ten for a brutal fight to the death, pulling in 4.6 million viewers and a 21% share.
Over on ITV, the second series of Big Star’s Little Star (8pm) continued as a number of barely-recognisable celebrities dragged their fragile and stupidly-named children in front of a national audience for a wee bit of harmless exposure. The hour of forced sound bites and aggressive smiling brought in 3.4 million viewers.
Over on BBC Two, the trials and tribulations suffered by those in the property market continued, with the fourth episode of semi-sympathetic documentary Under Offer: Estate Agents on the Job (9pm). The show looked at the wide array of houses available and the different personalities suited to each price range, bringing in an audience of 1.6 million and a 7% share.
Earlier in the afternoon, ITV’s soaps bagged the top two spots with Emmerdale securing 6 million viewers at 7pm, while Coronation Street (7:30pm) took the number one spot with 7 million viewers and a 36% share.
Much later, 10pm saw Channel 4 kick off an hour of brand new comedy with Ricky Gervais’ gurning simpleton Derek securing a little over 1 million viewers. Straight afterwards saw the return of surreal big budget sketch show Cardinal Burns (10pm).
Despite the media attention, the opening episode of the second series only managed an audience of 485,000 viewers and a 4% 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.