TV Overnights: Another East End pub brawl fends off the pull of football
Tuesday night saw two titans of British culture clash, as the two biggest corner stones of modern broadcasting faced off against each other. That’s right; someone’s only gone and scheduled the football against EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm) again.
While the fact we now live in peace time (catch-up, multi telly houses) meant domestic arguments are kept to a minimum, we must look back with respectful silence to the days when there would have been only one winner.
It was a good job serial agro dispenser Kat Moon was in the mood for a bit of a tussle. Tuesday saw the brunette slum dweller in a bit of an edgy mood as evidentially she isn’t a fan of ‘the new Monday’ either.
Late for work, unlucky in life – the former golden girl was looking for someone to vent her self-procured rage on. Luckily her husband’s new dolly bird, Roxy Mitchell, was around to push all the right buttons.
Back in the olden times you’d have to wait all year for a soap’s Christmas special in order to see a good old pub brawl. Whether it’s a tussle in the Woolpack, Rover’s or the Vic – sadly the lager infused punch up is now a weekly staple in the soaps.
7.4 million viewers tuned in to see Kat and Roxy roll about on the sticky floors of The Queen Vic, for what must be the fifth time this year. Elsewhere, Masood continued to pursue Carol Jackson in his all kinds of wrong endeavour, capturing a healthy 32% share.
But of course, they weren’t the only problems Kat Moon was facing last night – her unadulterated berserker rage was diametrically opposed to Adrian Chiles’ audience-winning brand of Live UEFA Champions League (7:30pm) pre-match chatter over on ITV.
The man with the Xanax-sponsored personality didn’t prove too much of a distraction for the drama over on EastEnders, with Chiles and a few ex-football professionals spending 15 minutes trying to guess what just might happen. An audience of 2.9 million viewers tuned in for the first 15 minutes block from Emirates Stadium, hoping the presenter’s power of guesswork foresight was worth the bother.
Once the match between Arsenal and Bayern Munich actually kicked off at 7:45pm, the audience jumped up to over 4 million viewers, yet somehow the London soap’s audience remained strong.
The German team wasted no time in proving their worth – within seven minutes Toni Kroos had scored the first goal of the match keeping Arsenal on their toes. Muller netted another ball for the away team 21 minutes in, with Arsenal finally allowing themselves a goal of their very own in the 55th minute.
Bayern Munich did the right thing and quashed all hope in the 77th minute as they scored their third and final goal. The entire coverage attracted an average audience of 4.9 million viewers and a 20% share, with interest peaking at 6 million fans during the second half.
While the latter half of the game was getting under way on ITV, BBC One broadcast the penultimate episode of Death in Paradise (9pm), bringing us another barmy host of characters and the token dead person. It was sprinklers at the ready last night, as the entire cast had to pretend a storm was battering the lovely island of Saint Marie.
Ben Miller and his fatally British detective had to brave the hose pipe and wind machine in order to solve the mystery of the dead meteorologist (it’s always nice when the plot neatly ties in with the weather).
While the audience did increase slightly once the match wrapped up, the harmless and balmy procedural held strong for the whole hour. 6.1 million viewers tuned in to see if another stunt piece of casting was on the cards (indeed, t’was Matthew Horne’s battered husk that was getting all the attention), resulting in a 25% share.
Must television ruin everything for us? For years a secret epidemic has been taking London by its deathly and tasty grip. Fried chicken shops have been popping up all over the country at a higher rate than the SARS virus in its prime, yet no one openly acknowledges it.
So it’s clear we’re all secretly addicted. Does that mean we have to talk about it – Channel 4 seems to think so. The Fried Chicken Shop – A Day in the Life (9pm) struck a chord with the ever-hungry viewing public as the documentary ended being the third most tweeted about show last night.
Despite the recent discovery of surprise ingredients in cheap and nasty food, the show isn’t trying to be an investigative documentary detailing our drunken dependency on the suspiciously low-priced ‘chicken’ – instead it aimed to capture the social interactions over the course of one day.
The beautiful shots of glistening, moist, warm lab-grown meat pulled 1.7 million viewers into its greasy gravity, netting a 7% share. Six series and a film, please.
Straight afterwards Utopia‘s (Channel 4, 10pm) dark plan to save the planet by sterilising the human race through dodgy mass produced food had come to fruition. It’s enough to make you wonder if the horse meat scandal was just a knock on effect from very impressive marketing.
Not that it mattered in the end – despite generating over 340 tweets per minute, only half a million viewers sought out the ultimate truth about the manuscript. Beautifully shot and disturbingly executed, with any luck the show will flourish in catch up and DVD, allowing us to go deeper into its dirty and grimy world of conspiracy.
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.