TV Overnights: The ultimate night of soap drama bags 5m viewers for ITV1
Wednesday has recently been the one night of the week the schedule is mercifully free of soaps (apart from the odd episode of Emmerdale), but the viewers who have been lulled in to a sense of security were in for a shock last night.
Instead of being restricted to their sets and forced at gunpoint to memorise script after script, the UK’s soap actors were let loose and set upon London’s South Bank for The British Soap Awards 2012 (ITV1, 8pm). The prestigious annual event saw the nation’s favourite damaged characters spray tanned, shoved in a coach and shipped over to The London Studios for a night of backslapping and high-drama. Host Philip Schofield spent the two hour running time ‘building to an intense and powerful climax’ which saw Pam St Clement win a lifetime achievement award for her longer-than-a-life-sentence tenure as Pat Butcher.
EastEnders took home the best soap award for the fifth year in a row, with Coronation Street picking up a number of acting awards. 5 million viewers tuned in for the ceremony which was mostly two hours of actors smiling and clapping on cue. And montages. Lots of them. There were plenty of clips on offer, featuring never-ending scenes of the actors SHOUTING dramatically. 225,000 of the audience chose to watch the event on ITV1 HD, exposing some seriously dodgy acne cover-up on Emmerdale.
On a much more sobering note, BBC Two debuted a new series at 8pm; the first episode of Antiques Uncovered saw minute historian Dr Lucy Worsley and evil sci-fi villain Mark Hill examine antiques that were used for entertaining in ye olden days. The programme managed an average audience of 1 million viewers.
At the same time over on the mainstream sister channel, it was week eight of The Apprentice (BBC One, 9pm) and Lord Sugar had his eager crew spend £150 in a wholesale warehouse in a vain attempt to see if they could ‘sniff out what sells’ in Essex. Does Lord Sugar really have it in for anything east of the West End? Is this where he thinks ‘punters’ originate? To add to insulting stereotypes, Team Sterling chose to flog fake tan outside a bleak shopping centre and cleared all their stock. The episode was down just under half a million viewers week on week, pulling in 6.1 million people in total. An audience share of 25% watched as Team Phoenix ended up in the boardroom with project manager Jade throwing an undignified wobbly.
This was followed by The Apprentice: You’re Fired over on BBC Two at 10pm, with the spin-off show attracting the channel’s biggest audience of the day. 2.2 million viewers watched Russell Kane and more random guests being joined by the unfortunate candidate who was all about ‘strategy’ – just not a very good strategy.
Earlier on ITV1, solo soap Emmerdale saw Sam feeling a bit guilty when he was informed his father’s cancer may have returned. It’s cool, though; Zak’s only lying about dying. The episode pulled in 5.9 million viewers, resulting in a 32% audience 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.