Sherlock rules over weekend viewing with 8.8m viewers
The weekend’s television kicked off with a few damp fireworks as another hoard of needy and vaguely familiar people stepped up to the platform to be judged by baying audiences in the Celebrity Big Brother Launch at 9pm.
Embarrassingly enough, it turned out not to be the grand event Channel 5 was hoping for with the parade of lost souls losing out to more consistent BBC One ‘celebrity’ programming such as Celebrity Mastermind (BBC One, 7pm) which walked away with 5.2 million viewers, while Pointless Celebrities (BBC One, 5:15pm) pulled in 4.3 million a little earlier.
In total, 3.1 million viewers tuned in for the two hour event in which generally confused writer lady Liz Jones was indefinitely handcuffed to deluded stage school child Dappy, resulting in the 20th biggest audience of the day and a 14% share.
Unfortunately for the barrel scraping antics on Channel 5, BBC One had some more arsenal in the 9pm slot with the reality show unable to compete with Dr. Nicky and her sassy new hairdo on Silent Witness.
The tense second episode of the 17th series (really) had the pulling power to conquer the 9pm window, securing 6.2 million viewers and a 25% share.
Meanwhile on ITV, June Brown went into the grubby details about her promiscuous past on a very special episode of Piers Morgan’s Life Stories (ITV, 9pm). The national treasure, who is known for playing Dot Cotton on EastEnders, basically spent the hour talking about playing Dot Cotton on EastEnders and graphically reminding the audience that she was young once.
The latest tell-all love-in from the friend of the famous brought in 2.8 million for ITV and an 11% share.
Earlier on in the evening, Coronation Street (ITV) once again won the soap battle, pulling in 8.4 million with its first episode of the night at 7:30pm.
For some mad reason, daytime quiz show Pointless Celebrities once again reared its head and only went and walked away with Saturday’s biggest audience. 5.9 million viewers watched the cast of Waterloo Road, Grange Hill and Educating Yorkshire, resulting in a 25% share.
Earlier, the FA Cup Live (ITV, 4:45pm) game between Arsenal and Tottenham locked in ITV’s biggest audience of the day, with 5.1 million viewers tuning in for The Gunners’ victory.
At 7:15pm, Tom Daley and his special pair of panties were back for a second series of Splash! (ITV), because the nation demanded its return, apparently. 4.8 million viewers tuned in to watch a number of numpties fall into water from great heights only for the snotty show off upstart to put them all to shame.
Later at 8:45pm, BBC One’s great dependable drama Casualty was back for another functionary episode, capturing the biggest audience in the 9pm slot with 4.6 million viewers and a 20% share.
Over on ITV at 8:50pm, the sound of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could be heard galloping along as the sixth series of Take Me Out hit our screens. The spray tan convention made up of ‘strong’ and ‘outspoken’ young women took in 4.2 million viewers and an 18% share.
Meanwhile in the desolate wastelands of Channel 5, Celebrity Big Brother was once again beaten by the same two daytime quiz shows with ‘celebrity’ in the title – only managing an audience of 1.7 million and an 8% share.
Before viewers could get through to Sunday night’s main event they had to sit through the usual seventh day schedule clutter, guaranteeing healthy audiences for Antiques Roadshow (5.9 million viewers at 7:30pm on BBC One) and Countryfile (5.6 million at 6pm on BBC One).
There was also the return of Dancing on Ice (ITV, 6:15pm) to contend with as Strictly‘s dirtier and poorer cousin launched its ninth series. 6.3 million viewers tuned in to see ex-soap stars and rejected talent competition fodder strap their skates on.
The all-star final ever series saw Joe Pasquale and some generic Hollyoak‘s totty get the boot in Dancing on Ice: The Skate Off at 8:30pm, which was watched by 5.4 million people.
Finally at 9pm was Sherlock (BBC One). After returning from the dead last week the selfish sleuth was faced with the more challenging matter of giving a best man’s speech.
The middle episode of the third series, The Sign of Three, saw Sherlock turn his pompous, fidgety genius metre all the way up to eleven and turned into a right old attention queen.
Taking all the limelight away from Dr. Watson on his wedding day, the detective even went on to solve an attempted murder while giving the trying speech, all the while disorientating audiences with a flurry of chronologically-challenged flashbacks.
In total, an average audience of 8.8 million viewers (down from last Wednesday’s 9.2 million) tuned in to see Sherlock finally accept that life moves on (especially when you’ve pretended to be dead for two years), capturing the weekend’s biggest audience and a 32% share.
The latest antics for the socially blind crime-solving toff amassed an army of activity on Twitter, topping the online conversation surrounding Sunday’s TV shows. At its the peak the show was generating 4,524 tweets per minute, with viewers probably trying to help each other to figure out just what the hell was going on.
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.