TV Overnights: ITV’s heartwarming night of celebrity flatlines
ITV’s soaps attracted the big numbers early on Wednesday evening with the later prime time offerings resulting in some slim pickings.
Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) highlighted the perils on living in a close-knit community as Alicia was forced to plan her current husband’s new wedding. Which tends to happen to us all from time to time.
It’s about time these characters branched out of the incestuous social circle – diverging from the common stream can do wonders for small town breeding. 7 million viewers tuned in to see Alicia put on a brave face and sort out the minute details for David and Priya’s happy day, resulting in a 31% share.
Immediately afterwards was the midweek trip to Weatherfield and there was plenty of drama going on in the big smoke. Wednesday night meant another trip to the police cells for adventurous couple Fiz and Tyrone. Seriously, how many times can one person visit a police station without being permanently branded a proper fiend of the community?
Tyrone, now vying for the position of the Coronation Street‘s (ITV, 7:30pm) wide-eyed simpleton alongside Kirk, couldn’t figure out all the commotion he caused by stealing a baby for a few short hours. Wednesday’s slice of improbable drama saw Tyrone save his beloved from the fuzz, taking the full brunt of the law on his elongated shoulders.
The latest twists in the baby-snatching saga pulled in the biggest audience of Wednesday night, securing an audience of 8.4 million viewers and an average share of 35%.
The rest of the night’s midweek viewing looked particularly bleak.
Over on BBC One at 8pm, Angela Rippon sniffed her way around the bed linen and toilets of Majorca were she was determined to scare us all from leaving the UK ever again. Yes, the veteran personality and her team of sunshine squaddies were back for a second episode as they kicked down the door of the package holiday, held a gun to the rep’s head and demanded answers. Metaphorically, it should be added.
Holiday Hit Squad (BBC One, 8pm) easily secured it’s time slot with 3.8 million viewers watching in horror as the team somehow found their way into dodgy kitchens and toilets worldwide. Rippon’s on-going destruction of her legacy wrangled in a 16% share.
Poor old ITV. The broadcaster continually gets slatted due to the amount of vacant entertainment programming on its schedules yet in a surprise move ITV last night dedicated two whole hours of prime time to a worthy cause – the uncomfortable topic of organ donation.
First up was From The Heart: A Tonight Special (ITV, 8pm) which saw chivalrous humanitarian Jonathan Maitland document patient’s struggles on the organ waiting list, highlighting the problems with the UK’s attitude towards organ ‘wastage’.
As it turns out, serious topics in the later evening slot turns audiences away in droves, running straight into the arms of Angela Rippon on BBC One. 2 million viewers watched the Tonight special, securing a 9% share.
Things went bad to worse for the selfless channel – From the Heart (ITV, 9pm) saw the audience fall by half. McFly, the troubled children from Outnumbered and even the presence of presenting demi-god Dermot O’Leary couldn’t persuade potential viewers that a midweek dose of heavy hearted pleading was the best option.
A glut of celebrities showed up for the all-singing all-dancing organ plead-fest didn’t strike a chord with viewers with only an audience of 1 million people (a 5% share) tuning in.
Which meant that the 9pm victory belonged to BBC One and a rather uninspiring hour of television. DIY SOS: The Big Build was so indistinguishable from any other Nick Knowles-fronted paint-a-poor-persons-house renovation show that we needn’t go into details. What was surprising is that 3.8 million viewers were still entranced by the age old formula, comfortable securing the time slot with a share of 18%.
Oh – in case you missed it last week (and haven’t already rewatched it a million times on ITV Player) the commercial broadcaster offered lucky late night viewers another chance to treat their eyes to an hour of Martin Clunes – Heavy Horsepower (ITV, 10:35pm) in which the nation’s favourite rejected Spitting Image monstrosity doted on his working horses for an hour.
An audience of 788,000 viewers showed up for a second bout of horse petting, resulting in a 7% share. Oh, to have high powered friends in factual commissioning. Whatever will Martin decide to love next?
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.