Mary Berry’s first solo outing nets 3.2m for BBC Two
Monday evening saw one half of TV’s recent success story launch their very own show, attempting to brighten up the start of a fresh week with some scones, jam, received pronunciation and a bit of good old-fashioned can-do optimism.
With Paul Hollywood running amok in the town of his namesake, the opportunity was open for the beloved but fearfully stern Mary Berry to remind the nation about her long-running solo career.
Like Robin escaping the shadow of Batman, Mary Berry Cooks (BBC Two, 8:30pm) saw the food writer display a new-found energy and charisma as she chatted to the camera in a very relaxed and natural fashion, all the while seriously struggling to get a grip on some giant cooking apples while attempting to peel them.
3.2 million viewers tuned in to see Mary ‘do a Nigella’ (no – not that part) as she invited friends, family and production staff around to socialise and chomp on her goods, all under the glare of the camera.
While not as popular as the phenomenally successful show that respawned Mary’s career in her twilight years, it certainly performed a lot better than The Great British Sewing Bee. A 13% audience share tuned in to see just how Mary properly prepares for a garden tea party, a topic that no doubt keeps us all up at night.
In the prime time drama stakes both BBC One and ITV offered up some crime procedurals at 9pm, although in the third series of BBC’s legal drama Silk, it was kind of hard to tell who the real bad guys were as they all dressed like the evil teacher from Harry Potter.
The second episode of the current run saw Maxine Peake’s becloaked barrister given the impossible task of defending an unruly footballer, all the while making sexy eyes with Rupert Penry-Jones’ prosecutor. 4.1 million viewers tuned in to see the latest legal and personal battles, resulting in an 18% share.
Doing slightly better on ITV was Stephen Tompkinson’s despondent and weary regional detective (aren’t they all) DCI Banks (9pm), who was back with a fresh new two-part case. The biggest audience in the 9pm slot watched as Banks’ attempt to help out a neighbour ended in the usual catastrophe, securing 4.6 million viewers and a 20% share.
At the same time both Channel 4 and Channel 5 offered up some distorted version of reality for national consumption. As per usual, the sound of screaming women in labour and the sight of faintly partners made up the majority of One Born Every Minute (9pm) on Channel 4.
The second episode of the fifth series brought all the squeamish sequences you’ve come to expect – inductions, caesareans and botched labour ward proposals were all accounted for – with 2 million viewers and a 9% share all deciding to spend their Monday night in the company of traumatised patients.
Those at home took to Twitter to share their pain, with One Born Every Minute generating a total of 13,929 tweets throughout the broadcast.
Much less worthy of your time was Channel 5’s Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away! (9pm), a documentary which fell into the extremely popular ‘let’s just watch other people do their miserable jobs’ genre. The sobering tales of repossession proved to be the broadcaster’s biggest hit of the day, netting an impressive 1.9 million viewers.
Over on BBC Two at 9pm was the first episode of Evan Davis’ arrogant Mind the Gap: London vs the Rest in which the reporter waxed lyrical about how great it is to live in King’s Landing London while the rest of the country apparently lounges about in mud and animal faeces.
1.6 million viewers tuned in to see Davis explore the reasons behind why exactly the capital has it so good, netting a 7% share. Those on Twitter took notice too, generating the seventh highest amount of tweets for TV yesterday.
With it being a Monday evening, all the top soaps were out in full force, with dominant drama Coronation Street (ITV) once again feeling the need to treat us to a double helping of Weatherfield life.
It goes without saying at this stage that the first episode of the Northern soap easily claimed the day’s top spot, with 8.4 million viewers (a 38% share) tuning in for the first visit to the street at 7:30pm.
Unusually though, the second episode at 8:30pm slipped down to third place as its audience of 7.6 million viewers couldn’t fend off EastEnders‘ (BBC One, 8pm) 7.7 million and a 33% share, resulting in mixed results for the ITV soap.
Earlier at 7pm, Emmerdale‘s latest murder plotline got underway as worried father Dominic discovered that his daughter Gemma was a missing person. Her death, at the hands of little Belle Dingle, should see the soap’s number swell in the coming weeks but at the moment it had to make do as the fourth most popular show of the day with 7 million viewers and a 34% 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.