TV Overnights: Double firing pulls in 6.2m for BBC One
Lord Sugar and authoritative finger pointing helped the UK’s viewing population peak last night, bringing Thursday’s biggest audience to BBC One.
Has it been 10 weeks already? With the dreaded interview stage around the corner, Lord Sugar and his scribbling minions have held on to their most ‘special’ candidates in order to psychologically tear them apart next week.
6.2 million viewers watched as the remaining survivors got their orders to haggle luxury brands into supplying discounts for annoying coupon services that flood your inbox with products you’d never use. The episode saw a slight increase; up 220,000 viewers from last week. Never one to be trusted, His Sugarness sprung a surprise on the team that failed in the most obvious manner, and pulled a double firing out of his box of tricks, securing a 26% audience share.
A dead Oxford professor! A dodgy university development deal! An embarrassing video leaked to the internet! DI Lewis and his trusty sidekick had their work cut out for them in second two-hour instalment of the latest series. Lewis (ITV1, 8pm) captured 4.9 million viewers, down slightly on last week’s episode. Lewis and Hathaway sifted through the clues as him of Heartbeat and her from Game of Thrones provided some useful distraction, netting a 22% share.
The phenomenon that is The Only Way Is Essex (ITV2, 10pm) netted a huge audience of 890,000 viewers last night, firmly cementing its place in cultural landscape.
With the final episode of series five going out next week, viewers lapped up their weekly dose of hard reality action.
The documentary show, dealing with the harsh realities of everyday life in recession-era Essex, focuses on a cast of slurring medicated children’s presenters dressed up as porn stars.
Audience interest peaked in the last 15 minutes with a massive 956,000 tuning in to see if character A and character B could resolve their differences before the cameras power off for the current series. With that many people tuning in it’s easy to see why the show has been inescapable since it began in October 2010, with last night’s instalment providing ITV2’s biggest audience of the day; no mean feat.
Despite the media attention it has been receiving, the second episode of 24 Hours in A&E (Channel 4, 9pm) lost viewers week on week, with last night’s episode down 400,000 viewers.
However, Boyish Dr. Matt was the star of the show, as the cameras followed him around South London’s King’s College Hospital. 1.9 million viewers watched as Matt had to deal with a variety of traumas with another 365,000 tuning in an hour later on Channel 4 +1.
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.