TV Viewing Round-Up: February 2013

The return of Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway – after a four year absence – proved that the pint sized Geordies are still the nation’s favourite light entertainment presenters.

The opening show of the tenth series, which saw recent I’m A Celebrity runner up Ashley Roberts join the show, was a decent sized hit for ITV.

Over 7 million viewers tuned in to watch Mr McPartlin and Mr Donnelly’s new feature ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Out of Me Ear’ and the replacements for Little Ant and Dec (after puberty made the old pair redundant).

It’s often been said that Britain is a nation of animal lovers, so it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that the latest wildlife show from Sir David Attenborough attracted good ratings this month.

Featuring exotic wildlife such as the Gelada Baboon, meerkats and black rhino and covering terrain from Kalahari to Namib (amongst others), BBC One’s latest natural history programme, Africa, raked in a top audience of 6.6 million this month.

BBC One’s Let’s Dance for Comic Relief, returned to the schedules in February, featuring a new batch of celebrities trying to be as funny as ‘that Robert Webb routine’ from the first series.

Hitting the ground running was pun master extraordinaire Tim Vine, whose Justin Timberlake inspired dancing brought just under 7 million viewers to Auntie Beeb on 16th February.

February also saw a new prison documentary from ITV, following on from 2011’s similarly themed Strangeways, that focused on the occupants of Her Majesty’s Prison Aylesbury.

Though not likely to find much favour with the ‘angry of Tunbridge Wells’ set, the two-parter found a captive audience on the UK’s main commercial broadcaster.

Just over 6 million wanted the first episode broadcast on 18th February, which was enough to the see it just sneak into this month’s top 20 programme list.

Elsewhere the underwhelming and borderline dull The Brit Awards rated otherwise well with the music watching public, hosted once again by an understated James Corden.

The UK music industry’s self proclaimed biggest award ceremony pulled in 6.9 million viewers, saw big wins for Frank Ocean, Ben Howard, Mumford & Sons and somebody called Emeli Sandé (she must be a new, undiscovered talent).

England’s ultimately doomed quest to win a first 6 Nations Grand Slam title since the World Cup winning year (way back in 2003), proved a ratings winner for BBC One.

Six Nations: England vs France, which included a decisive try from centre Manu Tuilagi, was seen by 6.6 million people. Whilst Six Nations: Ireland vs England, affected by rain in Dublin’s Aviva stadium, had just under 6.1 million viewers.

There’s a pretty familiar look to the top of this month’s chart, with the top two slots being held by BBC One’s Call The Midwife and comedy juggernaut Mrs Brown’s Boys. The former pulled in 10.9 million viewers, whilst Irish mammy attracted 9.2 million people for the final episode of the third series.

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