TV Overnights: Camel toe popular with ITV audience
The sight of a sitting member of parliament and ex-soap actress turned WAG eating camel toes hooked viewers to ITV1 last night. It would have been a surprise to see Helen Flanagan recite the complete works of Shakespeare, yet it’s fair to say her portrayal of dizzy airhead Rosie Webster in Coronation Street wasn’t exactly a stretch for her.
Last night’s instalment of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! which featured MP for Mid Bedfordshire Nadine Dorries beating Ms Flanagan in the Rotten Rhymes trial, pulled in 8.1 million jungle addicts (which equated to a 32.2% share of the 9pm audience). The challenge saw the two camp ‘favourites’ chew their way through ostrich anus, baked spider and fermented duck egg, alongside some camel toes. It proved to be a better than usual Tuesday night for the main commercial broadcaster as viewers peaked at 8.3 million.
Despite the increased Tuesday competition, BBC One’s The Paradise held up very well. The period piece retail drama attracted 4.7 million viewers, which is an increase of 100,000 on last Tuesday’s overnight rating (against lower rated Manchester City versus Ajax match).
Auntie Beeb’s flagship misery soap opera Eastenders, saw the previously stable and quite likeable Cora Cross go down with a dose of ‘Walford Woes’. And if the sight of Syed and Christian falling apart over the former’s decision to let his ex-wife take his daughter away wasn’t joyless enough, the scriptwriters have decided to resurrect Cora previously thought dead baby daughter via a hooky “I had her adopted” plot twist.
Thus Cora spent most of last night’s episode either ignoring semi-boyfriend Patrick’s questions about the future Walford resident (that’s not hard to predict) or shouting at what appeared to be the only customer in her charity shop. This was coupled with a fairly dull storyline that saw Derek and Max track down a childhood flame of Derek’s. It’s a wonder that 7.5 million people sat through all of that.
The heady days of The Great British Bake Off may be fading somewhat for BBC Two, but this doesn’t mean that there isn’t still an army of food fanatics wanting to watch people cooking. MasterChef: The Professionals managed to attract an average audience of 2.8 million and a 12.2% share of viewing.
Multiple trick pony Heston Blumenthal’s latest mad idea (oversized food) grabbed just over one million viewers for Channel 4, with George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces achieving the station’s highest rating of 1.8 million viewers.
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.