Northern noir The Driver nabs 9pm slot despite -14% fall
BBC One’s dark northern thriller The Driver continued at 9pm last night, with the second episode seeing a slight fall in popularity as David Morrissey’s taxi driver-come-mafia chauffeur was dealing with serious spoilage issues in his vehicle.
After 4.3 million viewers tuned in for the opening episode, in which a bored middle-aged man accepted a suspicious job offer from an old jailbird friend, last night’s audience fell by -14% as The Driver had to deal with the small matter of a screaming man in his car boot.
Last night’s action saw our protagonist slip further into the ethically obsolete murky Manchester underworld and brought in an audience of 3.7 million viewers. Despite the dip in viewers, the brutal drama secured the 9pm slot with an 18% share.
The diesel-fuelled excitement didn’t stop with BBC One as its sister channel waved a tearful farewell to a documentary about the M6. Simply because there are many, many hours of the schedule to fill.
The fourth and final episode of The Motorway: Life in the Fast Lane (BBC Two, 9pm) dealt with the relocation of a colony of crested newts due to a portion of the tarted-up road getting a bit of a redesign.
For each of the preceding three weeks the enthralling doc had managed to attract the attention of around 2.4 million motorway enthusiasts. Last night’s epic finale saw a similar audience tuning in; 2.3 million viewers watched emergency services deal with the sour aftermath of an overturned milk truck, netting an 11% share.
Over on Channel 4, Gordon Ramsay was off to warmer climes, taking his well-worn format on the road, now that he’s been chased out of the States once and for all. The second episode of Ramsay’s Costa del Nightmares (9pm) saw the shouty chef descend upon a restaurant in south west France, dragging his tired shtick with him.
The folded-faced cook actually improved upon last week’s audience of 1.1 million, with last night’s Ramsay fans swelling all the way up to 1.4 million and a 7% share.
At the same time on Channel 5, the fifteenth series of flashy and slick murder show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (9pm) brought in an audience of 1 million viewers, with this week’s assault against logic netting a 5% share.
ITV’s evening was handed over to Live UEFA Champions League at 7:30pm as Manchester City faced off against AC Roma in Etihad Stadium, Manchester. The game actually kicked off properly at 7:45pm, with an average audience of 3.2 million viewers tuning in for the entire coverage.
A 16% share of the audience was kept glued to their screens for the entire game thanks to Man City’s goal in the first four minutes, but an equalising goal from Roma in the 23rd minute locked in the final 1-1 result.
Earlier at 8pm, Holby City (BBC One) won an audience of 4.3 million viewers and a 21% share, while the final episode of three-part ‘documentary’ Posh Pawn (Channel 4, 8pm) pulled in 1.2 million viewers into its vortex of feigned wealth and ego.
Earlier at 7pm on ITV, the residents of Emmerdale were still calming down after last week’s killing spree, betting 5.5 million viewers and a 30% share.
Over on BBC One at 7:30pm the neverending wedding day of Sharon and Phil continued on EastEnders as the wedding guests morbidly shuffled into the Queen Vic (where else) to get good and tight.
A little under 7 million viewers watched as the soap lived up to its matrimonial reputation with some truly horrific speeches and the usual amount of secrets being spilled out into the precarious Walford ecosystem.
An audience share of 35% watched as gun-enthusiast Shirley Carter went and shared her truly shameful Phil Mitchell-related lusty secret, netting Tuesday’s biggest audience.
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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