Nick & Margaret’s immigrant worries falls 23% in one night
Last night saw BBC One treat thrilled viewers to a second consecutive night of ropey immigration ‘study’ Nick & Margaret: Too Many Immigrants? (9pm) which brought the corporation’s two wise sages all the way to sunny Essex to meet some normal folk.
Following on from last year’s equally odd Nick and Margaret: We All Pay Your Benefits and Tuesday’s opening episode (which attracted a neat audience of 3.5 million viewers), part two pitched disgruntled and tattooed ‘British-borns’ to hang out with their immigrant counterparts in the hope of finding a little enlightenment, or failing that, a shouty debate.
Patronising scenes of Margaret and Nick jetting off to Essex to interview real ‘down-to-earth’ types and the simplicity of the ‘us vs them’ angle made the ‘experiment’ about as weighty as a decomposed Malteser.
The bizarre handling of such a hot topic saw the audience fall by 23% night on night, with a total of 2.7 million viewers watching as Nick and Margaret switched the tone now and again by continuously going into Morning TV chit chat mode in the back of taxis. However, the show still claimed the biggest 9pm audience with a 13% share.
At the same time on BBC Two, the Crossrail project was the latest in a long line of institutions getting the irreverent documentary treatment. In fairness to The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway (9pm) there was plenty to awe at throughout the hour-long show.
Featuring seriously mind boggling feats of engineering as over 10,000 workers toiled away under the underground in an attempt to revitalise mobility in the capital, the first of three episodes was watched by a hearty 2.5 million viewers and a 12% share.
Meanwhile, ITV provided a bit of public service with Testing Britain’s Worst Drivers: Crash Course (9pm), a light entertainment show that yelled the basic message that bad driving is bad, mmmkay.
For some reason unknown to most logical human beings, two of Britain’s ‘worst drivers’ agreed to be constantly filmed while driving idiotically and dangerously – so it was basically that rubbish BBC Three show you never watch but with stupid adults instead of stupid teenagers. 2.4 million viewers and a 12% share tuned in for the red light-running fun.
Both Channel’s 4 and 5 provided some reality fun at 9pm, with the horrifying screams on One Born Every Minute netting 1.4 million viewers and a 7% share while The Hotel Inspector Returns was watched by 1.2 million viewers and a 6% share.
8pm saw BBC One pitch Talk to the Animals, in which a zoologist attempted to talk to animals, against ITV’s quiz show about people with extremely white teeth All Star Mr & Mrs. While the BBC’s nature show managed to attract 2.3 million viewers, Philip Schofield and his all star contestants from Hollyoaks and Emmerdale brought in 3.4 million viewers.
An hour earlier ITV held the reigns of Wednesday’s soap provisions, with rural crime drama Emmerdale netting an audience of 5.2 million and a 31% share. Straight up afterwards Coronation Street (7:30pm) stole the day’s top spot with 6.3 million viewers tuning in to see Peter Barlow’s life get even crapper, resulting in a 34% share.
To counterbalance the draw of the soaps, BBC Two once again reunited Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, albeit not in the same time and place. The younger of the two kicked off an hour of harmless innuendo at 7pm, with the 20th episode of Paul Hollywood’s Pies & Puds netting 701,000 viewers while a repeat of Mary Berry Cooks did slightly better with 922,000 viewers.
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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