Long Lost Family continues to win Wednesday night for ITV
Yesterday saw ITV’s sob-fest Long Lost Family (9pm) once again claim Wednesday’s prime time slot as the highly theatrical factual drama easily beat its rivals, mainly thanks to the show’s ability to manipulate viewers’ emotion chip with scientific precision.
Last night’s outpouring of pent-up guilt, snot and all the emotions that fall under the crying spectrum brought viewers two similar stories in which the subjects sought out estranged siblings.
The show, which promises to deliver closure of some kind for long-suffering guests, opened up with 4.2 million viewers when the fifth series debuted five weeks ago and has proved to be another successful run for ITV.
Last night Long Lost Family managed to bring in 3.6 million viewers to the commercial broadcaster, with the latest dose of healing reunions netting a 19% share.
Meanwhile, the unadulterated silliness of The Interceptor (9pm) continued for a fourth week on BBC One as the UNIT team continued to pensively hang around street corners looking highly suspicious while trying to take down some of that nasty crime.
Like a children’s Saturday morning TV show accidentally put in front of ‘discerning’ prime time audiences, the cartoonish set-up and direction, unfortunately, doesn’t translate to fun times with the tale of undercover police justice falling flat with most.
Dropping from 3.7 million to 2.8 million viewers by the second week, the story of an elite group of cops tasked with taking out the crime world’s kingpins has steadily lost its original pulling power.
Yesterday saw just 2.4 million people tune in to see main cop Ash (Looking‘s O-T Fagbenle) putting an old friend in harm’s way in order to catch The Viking, resulting in a 13% share.
Highlights of the third day of the annual grunt-fest that is Wimbledon continued on BBC Two at 8:30pm, with Wimbledon 2day managing to secure almost the exact same audience as every other day. 1.3 million viewers and a 7% share joined Clare Balding for a spot of analysis.
On Channel 4, some more lucky guest stars were arriving by the ambulance load through the doors of St George’s Hospital as the ninth series of 24 Hours in A&E (9pm) continued to write itself.
1.5 million viewers caught up with the latest bout of real life tragedy, resulting in Channel 4’s biggest audience of the day and an 8% share.
At the same time Channel 5 came super close to scoring 1 million viewers but just fells short. The real life spats that made up Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords (9pm) was watched by 999,000 viewers and a 5% share.
Earllier at 8pm, Don’t Tell The Bride‘s migration from BBC Three to BBC One continued to play out well, with 2.6 million viewers and a 15% share tuning in, eclipsing anything the terminal digital channel could muster.
At the same time, The Cube on ITV secured 2.9 million viewers, The Auction House on Channel 4 managed to bring in 1 million viewers while 686,000 people fell into the Channel 5 vortex thanks to 90 Cats & Counting: Cat Crazies.
Emmerdale (ITV) bagged Wednesday’s second place at 7pm with 5 million viewers and a 32% share while the latest drama from Coronation Street (ITV) took the top spot with 6.1 million viewers and a 35% share.
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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