The Apprentice reigns for a second consecutive night on BBC One
For the second night in a row Lord Alan of Sugar and his band of marketing mercenaries stormed the 9pm slot for BBC One, with the sophomore episode of The Apprentice giving viewers an unprecedented twist – that one of the teams was actually a bit okay.
Last night saw the 11th series of the hilarious business show continue a day after it debuted, with Thursday seeing the two teams (Connexus and Versatile, if you’re interested) tasked with creating and marketing a hair product extracted from cactus oil (it’s so hot right now).
After originally going crazy and mixing up the sexes in the first episode, The Right Honourable Lord Sugar reverted back to the gender divide for yesterday’s outing, with the boys and girls scrambling to design a bottle and an ad campaign.
As usual, the contestants seemed to go out of their way to be hostile, negative and jam in as much cringe-inducing behaviour as possible, cementing the ridiculous nature of the televised ‘job interview from hell’.
Wednesday’s opening episode secured 6.4 million viewers, a standard amount for the last few years’ premier outings, although two consecutive nights of desperate selling proved too much for some.
5.5 million viewers tuned in last night to see the victors being crowned after they came up with a male-targeted shampoo ad with some very suspicious high energy dance music, resulting in a 26% share and a gravity yoga class (as dumb as it sounds) for the winners.
ITV offered up the second part of slow-burning crime drama Unforgotten (9pm) in way of balance, with the cold case fun seeing a slight drop in popularity.
Last week 4.5 million viewers tuned in to ‘the new Broadchurch‘ to see Nicola Walker’s DCI Cassie Stuart and Sanjeev Bhaskar’s DS Sunny Khan dig into the past after a corpse was discovered hidden under a house after 40 years.
The moody and emotional mystery secured an audience of 3.9 million viewers last night, resulting in an 18% share for ITV.
Over on Channel 4, the nation waited with baited breath (lols, not really) as the broadcaster aired the sixth and final episode of run-in- a-dramatic-fashion show Hunted (9pm).
Like Challenge Anneka on a cocktail of paranoia-inducing narcotics, the painfully contrived ‘reality’ show saw a group of security ‘experts’ hang about a TV studio while pretending to apprehend ‘real’ people on the run.
Opening up with 1.7 million viewers and plenty of Twitter activity, the following weeks saw viewers grow tired of the bizarrely executed concept (going on the run with a full-on production crew isn’t the most logical of ideas) with last night’s grand finale pulling in 988,000 viewers, a 5% share and coming in as the fifth most tweeted about show.
On BBC Two there was a double bill of 70s East End sitcom Cradle to Grave (9pm), with the final two episodes securing 1.3 million viewers and 1.2 million viewers, and both pulling in a 6% share.
Channel 5 went all 90s and got EXTREME about locomotives, with the latest adventure on Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railway Journeys (9pm) securing 1 million viewers and a 5% share.
Earlier at 8pm, 4 million viewers (a 20% share) tuned in to see the Anne Robinson-shaped hole on Watchdog (BBC One), while Harvest 2015 netted 1.9 million viewers and a 9% share on BBC Two.
Probably the only man from Sunderland that sounds like he has to actually work at his uniquely affected brand of Geordie accent, George Clarke wandered through some more amazing spaces at 8pm, with George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces (Channel 4) bringing in 1.6 million viewers and an 8% share.
Earlier a double dose of Emmerdale (ITV) saw Arron being fingered for shooting former lover Robert, bringing in 5.8 million viewers (a 31% share) at 7pm and falling to 5.5 million viewers and a 27% share at 8pm.
BBC One’s EastEnders (7:3pm) took Thursday’s top glory in the end, with 6 million viewers tuning in to see the romance blossom between Fatboy and Donna, while getting a lesson in hidden disabilities, resulting in a 31% 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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