TV Overnights: 1.5m watch as Hotel GB opens its doors
Just weeks after hitting the creative stratosphere with envelope-pushing The Audience, last night saw Channel 4 outdo themselves once more.
The brief must have been to ‘create a show where the title will remind people of the post-Olympic national pride; it must be entertaining and enlightening – and there needs to be bits involving real people (viewers love those), which will make the audience cry.’
So here is the premise: Hotel GB (9pm) rounds up all the channel’s familiar personalities that are currently ‘in between shows’ and puts them to work in a real hotel. For five days they must overlook the work of real desperate and unemployed people.
Gordon Ramsay is the potty-mouth chef, Mary Portas runs the hotel shop and Gok Wan… he talks about being a fat teenager. Being a nice person really works for Ramsay – earlier this year he showed us nice lads that are locked up in Brixton prison and now this. The TV personality has never looked so fresh-faced.
Apparently the exceptional members of staff will be rewarded with a real life minimum wage job – nice. 1.5 million watched the hotel’s first night, bringing in a 7% share.
Channel 4 has missed a trick here. With it being so close to Halloween, the producers should have gone down The Shining route. If the hotel was completely isolated and one member of the team was guaranteed to have a murderous psychotic breakdown, we’d be glued to our screens.
Nigella Lawson was back for round two of her journey through Italy’s easiest dishes. Liberally throwing a glad eye to the camera, like Delia after a few snifters of sherry, Nigella delved into her Italian gelato with sultry abandon.
It would appear viewers were not having as great a time though with audiences down 21% from last week’s opening episode. Two million viewers (a 9% share) watched as the self-trained cook walked us through creating the perfect courgette-based midnight snack. Mmmmm.
Fans of modest and humble humans beings look away now. In the 9pm slot was James Nesbitt’s medical vehicle Monroe, which ITV1 brought back for a second run.
Dr Monroe is, naturally, a rogue neurosurgeon who plays by his own rules and is continuously maimed by his very genius. It must not be a great leap for Nesbitt (the one from the phonebook ads) to get into the mind of this brilliantly original character. Monday night’s return saw Monroe squint a lot, reminiscent of a twelve year old trying to look cool, and bumping heads with a square boss who didn’t understand his genius.
It seems that the British public might also be exhausted of the loose cannon’s brilliance; the Northern Irish dwarf’s return was down 40% on the first episode in March 2011. 3.4 million viewers tuned in to the launch of the second series, resulting in a 14% share.
However everyone knows even Nesbitt’s talent is rendered powerless against the might of not one but three acting giants. The New Tricks team were rooting around for clues two years after a tennis pro jump to their death. Or did they?! The elder demographic detectives pulled in another huge audience to BBC1 – with 7.2 million viewers watching, resulting in a 30% share.
Once again it was up to Coronation Street (ITV1, 7:30pm) to run away with the biggest audience of the night. Tyrone’s life is not getting any easier and last night he tried to throw out his wife while hanging on to his baby. Eight million viewers tuned in to see his fool proof plan fall through, pulling in a 36% audience share.
The second episode at 8:30pm was down slightly with 7.9 million viewers and a 32% share.
Sandwiched between the Northern soap on BBC One was EastEnders at 8pm. With Phil Mitchell well and truly back in control of the Vic, he thought it was time to make a few changes. Kat and Alfie returned from the holiday to discover their services were no longer needed. Well, they were hardly the most professional landlords in the country. 6.9 million people watched the surprise announcement, securing a 29% share for the channel.
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.