Poirot’s last stand pulls in 4.8m for ITV
After 25 long years, Wednesday night brought some sweet relief for actor David Suchet as he finally laid Agatha Christie’s Poirot (ITV, 8pm) to rest.
The aging detective’s last case brought him and his plucky young sidekick, Captain Hastings, back to where it all began – the location of their very first case. A grubby country manor, some suspiciously plummy characters and – naturally – a spot of murder all brought the elements together for a dramatic final bout of sleuthing.
4.8 million viewers tuned in to see the now wheelchair-bound Belgian detective find his culprit by flexing his moustachioed noggin one last time. The two hour finale performed well with the older crowd but drama that’s been running for 25 years is hardly going to give the Hollyoaks audience a run for its money. A massive 94% of viewers were over the age of 34, with the swansong playing better with females (who made up 62% of the audience).
A prime time audience share of 22% gravitated towards ITV to wave goodbye to one of TV’s most iconic characters, beating everything else in the time slot.
Meanwhile, BBC One decided to go down the pandering alarmist route once again with programming better suited to the daytime/early evening schedule. The second episode of Britain on the Fiddle (9pm) saw fearless investigative reporter Richard Bilton – who spent a week stalking an innocent man while making a show about stalking – tracked down a dodgy benefit thief all the way to Spain.
An impressive 4 million viewers tuned in for a bit of cathartic comeuppance as the justice-dispenser shamed his targets, netting an 18% share.
Just when you thought it was safe to turn on Channel 4 again, the spiritual predecessor of 999: What’s You Emergency? was back to melt/break your heart in equal measures. 24 Hours in A&E (9pm) – the blaring and distressing spawn of One Born Every Minute – returned for a fourth series and startled viewers with various tales of horrifying car accidents.
A little over 2 million viewers tuned in to have their Wednesday ruined/reaffirmed with the challenging imagery, securing Channel 4’s biggest audience of the day and a 9% share.
Straight after ITV News at Ten, Hercule Poirot (sort of) returned from the dead in a celebration of the show’s silver anniversary and the career of David Suchet. The hour of reminiscing and backslapping that made up the meat of Being Poirot (ITV, 10:30pm) was watched by just under 1 million people and an 8% share.
The main show also attracted Twitter attention, with the great detective’s tragic suicide prompting 11,879 tweets, resulting in 326 per minute. Interestingly, this was bettered by Misfits (10pm) on E4 which, while only managing an audience of 321,000 viewers, generated 385 tweets per minute.
Wednesday’s soap pickings were rather slim with just one singular episode of both ITV soaps to keep feverish drama fans ticking over. As usual Emmerdale got the high-on-drama/low-on-plausibility ball rolling at 7pm as Amy cracked open a safe, stole her estranged child from nursery and decided to leave Yorkshire’s unluckiest village once and for all.
6.7 million viewers tuned in for the daring escape, securing the day’s second biggest audience and a 33% share.
Which meant that Coronation Street (ITV, 7:30pm) was Wednesday’s shiniest offering, pulling the day’s biggest audience into its bright light. The latest round of gobby shouting between rubbish parents David and Kylie brought in 8.2 million viewers and a 38% 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