TV Overnights: Olivia dominates BBC & ITV to become Sunday’s real winner
Sunday night saw the telly schedule receive a much needed booster injection in the form of a bit glamour and pizzazz.
In place of the usual Sunday evening fare (child killers, dusty detectives, grey tinged anti-nostalgia etc) there was a flurry of snapping cameras and giant white smiles as the British Academy Television Awards (BBC One, 9pm) kicked off from London’s Royal Festival Hall.
As expected, Olivia Coleman cemented her National Treasure status and walked away with every award including Best Special Effect. The eternally-present actress has appeared in nearly every television (not to mention film) production of the last twelve months, so it was just easier to hand them all over.
As this was the BBC, the whole affair was kept classy – there may have been a few foul mouthed utterances but at least the Best Factual Series wasn’t sponsored by Cillit Bang, or something. The ceremony, which eventually found a few spare statues backstage to hand out to Alan Partridge and The Great British Bake Off, attracted an audience of 6 million viewers and a 26% share – easily securing the 8-10pm time slot.
Meanwhile over on ITV, there was yet another period crime drama, this time starring – Olivia Coleman! Yep, she was at it again in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: The Murder in Angel Lane, a fictional sequel to 2011’s mostly non-fictional two hour original.
The 1860s set mystery saw Coleman reunite with her Tyrannosaur director Paddy Considine, who starred in the title role. The 19th century team up of the ‘misunderstood’ detective and an out of town Lady didn’t quite manage to overthrow the sight of Coleman crying on the other side but was still watched by 5.6 million viewers – a 23% share.
Just to make up for the amount of back slapping and hollow praise over on BBC One, it was a characteristically different night over on BBC Two. The channel dedicated the evening to celebrating the intellect of Richard Feynman, with William Hurt starring as the physicist charged with finding the cause of a space shuttle explosion in The Challenger (8pm).
The detailed dramatisation of the 1986 disaster was watched by over a million viewers and a 4% share. Next up was The Fantastic Mr Feynman at 9:30pm, a hour long profile of the celebrated American, which captured 689,000 viewers.
Earlier in the day was the weekend’s second episode of The Voice UK (BBC One, 7pm). If the hour and a half of pre-scripted emoting on Saturday simply wasn’t enough for you, then you were in luck as Sunday brought desperate viewers another hour of top notch schedule filler.
The first episode of The Voice UK saw the show enter the sing-off round, bringing a close to the blind judging and spinny-chair action. As the novelty device was the only component that made The Voice UK stand out against all the other identical talent shows, the BBC drafted in the big guns with the big voices in order to draw in viewers.
Yes, that’s right – mammoth voiced vocal gladiator Dido was on hand to make the transition as easy as possible. And it seemed to have worked. 7.4 million viewers tuned in to the new format on Saturday night with a further 7 million (a 30% share) tuning in for last night’s results show, in which we were once again treated to two competitors facing off and going full-on Sylvia Young in order to save their souls.
The surprise addition of the desirable and famous to last night’s schedule saw a shake-up of the typical winners. Shockingly, agricultural magazine show Countryfile (BBC One, 6pm) didn’t take Sunday’s biggest prize, barely managing fourth place. Despite a winning piece on the UK’s only wasabi farm from Julia Bradbury, the muddy-wellied sincerity pulled in 5.7 million viewers and a 28% share.
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.