Return of Benefits Street sees jaded welfare audiences fall

After 17 months of providing outrage-fodder for the tabloids and ‘inspiring’ a multitude of copycat content across all the broadcasters, Monday night saw Benefits Street (9pm) finally return to Channel 4, albeit this time in a much cuddlier, more saccharine form.

The second series of the show that markets itself saw the ‘action’ move from the now-notorious James Turner Street in Birmingham and up sticks to Kingston Road in Stockton-on-Tees.

Taking up much of last night’s narrative was the focus on the malevolent media circus that descended on the street, vilified by the residents who, bizarrely, had no trouble embracing the camera crew from Love Productions and allowing them complete access to their humdrum and sometimes criminal behaviour.

The very first episode of the show opened up with an overnight figure of 3.6 million viewers in January 2014 and – thanks to the sensationalist newspaper-selling hoopla – rose to 4 million viewers for the final episode five weeks later.

Thanks to the unprecedented deluge of welfare-based, exploitative, cheap schedule-filling programming that’s flooded the airwaves in the past year and a half, yesterday’s return didn’t make quite the impact Channel 4 had hoped.

A total of 2.5 million viewers and a 12% share tuned in last night to meet the new cast of characters, who pulled together to help each other out in times of need and close ranks on those educated media types lurking on every corner, representing a -37% fall compared to last year’s final episode.

In a similarly effortless vain, the broadcaster followed up the return of one particular type of documentary with a brand new fixed-rig set-up, with the fresh show proving that no corner of the UK is safe from Channel 4’s ‘make a documentary out of everything‘ policy.

Following on from A&E and maternity wards, nightclub toilets and drunken chicken shop encounters, The Night Bus (10pm) was the next logical conclusion for the broadcaster.

An total of 915,000 viewers tuned in from the safety of their homes to see reality-TV type intoxicated wrecks attempt to get home to Enfield Town, entertaining the masses with their loose-lipped conversations to net a 12% 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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