TV Overnights: Long Lost Family finale milks last drops of tears and bags 4.7m
Once again ITV saw a chance to capture Monday’s already physically and emotionally fraught audiences and beat them into gentle submission with the manipulative and contrived hit show Long Lost Family (9pm).
One of those programmes that does exactly what it says on the tin, the premise reunited estranged family and milked it for every single drop, even going so far as forcing presentertrons Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell to pose as involved and caring friends of the ‘guests’ through a series of pandering and condescending facial expressions.
Long Lost Family is the type of show that naturally belongs in the scheduling limbo of cheap daytime telly, yet the presence of familiar handlers, dramatic score and extreme editing to juice out, extract and highlight the pulpy soapish elements came together to level up the mawkish proceedings to a prime time event.
Naturally they saved a super sad one for last, but unusually the finale saw the audience fall below the 5 million mark that the show has been hovering around for the past eight weeks. 4.7 million viewers caught up with the familiar story of forced adoption, but a debilitating accident was also thrown into the mix for good measure.
Despite seeing a little dip in popularity, the uncomfortably ‘earnest’ sign off captured 9pm’s biggest audience and a 21% share.
There’s just no competing with Long Lost Family‘s ever-growing fan base, so BBC One acted accordingly and threw up a repeat of an inexplicably popular sunny crime procedural, Death in Paradise (9pm).
Showing up DOA the first time around, time hasn’t been good to the regional detective show as the pungent odour of rotten clichés has simply gotten worse.
Originally aired in January of this year, last night’s slice of tropical manslaughter saw Detective Inspector Johnny Englishman bumble about the picturesque locations, presumably complaining about the heat and lack of quality tea.
The decomposing – although, crucially, easy to follow – storyline dealt with treasure and pirates and easily brought in 3 million viewers and a 14% share.
Channel 4 attempted to educate the masses with more social experiments. Benefits Britain 1949 (9pm) sent three government dependent subjects back in time to learn exactly how easy we have it now. The show captured Channel 4’s biggest audience of the day with 1.9 million viewers.
At the same time on Channel 5 was the latest from Big Brother (yep, it’s still on) but it couldn’t keep up with scrounging time travellers on the other side. 1.3 million viewers caught up with the latest action from the house.
Despite all the prime time hoopla, it was the oversupply of soaps that captured the imagination of Monday evening’s audiences.
As usual Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) got the soap week rolling with an impressive 6.4 million viewers (a 32% share) tuning in. Later on, EastEnders (BBC One, 8pm) barely beat the rural soap’s performance with 6.5 million viewers and a 29% share tuning in for an absent Jim Branning’s 80th birthday.
It may have been the start of the week, but little matters like working have never stopped the residents of Coronation Street (7:30 & 8:30pm) from enjoying a good boozing session whenever they fancy. Last night’s excuse for everyone to be inexplicably in the Rovers at the same time came in the form of wee baby Jack’s party.
8.1 million viewers (a 38% share) watched the tension building up, with 7.9 million (a 35% share) tuning in to see an inevitable clash of personalities with a few drinks being thrown around for good measure. Weatherfield’s latest clashes brought in the two biggest audiences of Monday night.
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.