Royal Marines gets the ‘One Born’ treatment, nets 2.1m on C4
Just 24 hours after the Tournament That Shall Not Be Named finally wrapped up, the nation’s TV schedule snapped back into normality, with the strain of attempting to please and accommodate both insatiable football fans and ‘norms’ over (for now).
Instead of a massive cast of self-assured, tattooed enthusiasts kicking about a ball for 90 minutes, the TV-viewing public were treated a myriad of light entertainment, encapsulated perfectly by John Bishop’s Australia on BBC One at 9pm.
There’s really not much purpose to the Liverpool lad’s jaunt down under – apart from a very loose narrative where he’s pretending to retrace a cycling adventure he had as a youth – but that’s kind of the point of the show.
The second episode of the cycling trek saw John sign up for a bit of surfing and marvel at Australia’s large crocodiles, cementing his ground-breaking reputation and securing a 15% share with 3.2 million viewers.
Over on the other side was the return of ITV’s sure-fire ratings hit Long Lost Family (9pm), as bizarre presenting partners Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell came back for a fourth series of attempting to make vulnerable people cry all in the name of prime time entertainment.
Last night saw the dynamic duo (Campbell takes the role of a distant and slightly troubled father lurking about rural locations while delivering his sentimental spiel, while McCall unnerves people with her needy over-familiar best friend shtick) trudge through ancient guilt buried in strangers’ lives in order to produce those golden tears of ratings bliss.
Morally questionable manipulative prime time tat or a commended public service – regardless, the show proved to be as successful as ever. The return of Long Lost Family, and Davina’s patented ‘concerned’ expression, pulled in the 9pm slot’s biggest audience with 4.7 million viewers and a 22% share.
There was yet more ‘structured reality’ over on Channel 4 as the once-sacred experiences of the Royal Marines Commando School (9pm) was flogged to a fixed-camera-in-the-wall production style similar to the slew of every other Channel 4 documentary of late.
The documentary followed new recruits throughout the mentally torturous induction process, capturing all their fears and doubts Big Brother-style. So, very much like Full Metal Jacket but without the institutional aggression-induced breakdown and killing spree.
Channel 4’s biggest audience of the day, 2.1 million viewers, tuned in for the honest look at commando life, resulting in a 10% share.
On BBC Two, This World explored The Secret Life of Your Clothes at 9pm, with 1.3 million viewers and a 6% share tuning in to see Ade Adepitan find out exactly what happens to our donated wares.
From taking a critical look at goodwill to out-and-out hate mongering, 9pm brought the penultimate episode of Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole (Channel 5). The alarmist documentary looked at a variety of Romas in the UK exploiting the system, with 1.3 million viewers (a 6% share) lapping up the hour-long helping of paranoia.
There was more paranoia at 10pm on Channel 4, but this time with more of the harmless fictional and allegorical kind. The second series of the visually striking and unique Utopia jumped back in time to fill in the blanks of the large back-story.
Typically – as it’s actually quite good – hardly anyone bothered to watch. 509,000 viewers tuned in to see if the Network would succeed in its plan to sterilise most of the human race, netting a 3% share.
A double helping of Coronation Street (ITV) took the night’s top two spots, with an audience of 7.1 million viewers tuning in for the 7:30pm show, while a little over 7 million returned for the 8:30pm showing.
Earlier, Emmerdale (ITV) bagged 5.7 million viewers at 7pm while BBC One’s EastEnders at 8pm brought in 6.6 million viewers and a 32% share.
These figures are a significant improvement on the last four weeks, where the football-affected, schedule-hopping antics of the soaps saw audiences fluctuate greatly.
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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