TV Overnights: Lord Sugar’s semi pulls in 6.1m for BBC One
The tension was mounting in last night’s The Apprentice (BBC One, 9pm) with only one week to go before the dreaded interview stage. The semi-final pulled in the biggest audience of day as Lord Sugar gave the final five contestants another unaccountable task to prove their worth. The job in hand was to come up with a luxury product that is affordable to the masses, kind of defeating the whole idea of aspirational luxury items. While team Stirling went down the risky path of men’s grooming products (because the market must be screaming out for more), team Phoenix decided that adding alcohol to children’s confectionery was their ticket to success. Or jail.
In the end, Sir Alan of Cockney went with the safe bet and chose Ricky and Tom’s Modern Gentleman range (seriously). 6.1 million viewers watched as Phoenix failed to put the wine into Wine Gums and were dragged back to the boardroom for one last round of panic blaming this series. The ratings were nearly the exact same week on week, with last night’s instalment pulling in a 26% share. This is down over two million viewers compared to episode 11 of the previous series which aired in June 2011.
Cleaning up the leftover mess was Dara O Briain on The Apprentice: You’re Fired (10pm) on BBC Two. Joined by Ruby Wax and this week’s reject, the show once again proved very popular for the station. 2.3 million viewers caught the spin-off show, making it the channel’s most watched show of the day.
Another traumatic night in Kings College Hospital resulted in another episode of 24 Hours in A&E on Channel 4 at 9pm. Last night saw the team attend to a woman who fell while celebrating a promotion, resulting in brain damage. The show, where the bad news just keeps on coming, was watched by 2 million viewers, up from last week, with another 413,000 tuning in an hour later on Channel 4+1.
Lewis (ITV1, 8pm) was getting all hot and bothered last night as he uncovered a side to Oxford that would have poor old Morse spinning in his grave. In the third episode of the current run, the murder of a babysitter led Lewis and Hathaway into the world of suburban swinging, netting a 20% audience share for the two hour running time. 4.8 million viewers watched the penultimate episode of series six.
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.