Soaps
Baby alarms: they’re such an ingenious plot device nowadays for soaps. In Emmerdale one was used as clever way of concocting an alibi for a stable robbery, so the writers of Eastenders decided that the device would be the best way of delivering a bombshell for Tiffany Mitchell. The most watched episode of the soap was Tuesday’s, which had 16.24 million people watching. This was still less than Coronation Street‘s best three episodes.
Light Entertainment/Comedy
Top rated light entertainment, and I use the term very loosely, is ITV’s awful Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes. This episode showcased the ‘talents’ of the Coronation Street girls as the Spice Girls and actually managed to sound even worse then genuine article; 16.34 million tuned in to suffer this (one can only shudder at the thought of David Liddiment commissioning this for a full series).
On the comedy front BBC1 continues to rule the roost with Birds of a Feather and Dinnerladies, the only two comedies to make into this week’s top thirty programme list. They pulled in 11.22 million viewers and 9.53 million viewers respectively.
Factual/Drama
Deciding to milk the programme for all it’s worth, BBC1 showed a behind the scenes documentary for its popular makeover show Changing Rooms. Changing Room Stripped Bare was watched by 11.17 million people and the second most watched programme of Saturday night behind Casualty. The top drama of the week was Heartbeat, which pulled in 14.35 million viewers.
Sport
It was only six months ago but BBC1 and ITV both decided that it would be a great idea to rake over the mess that was England’s World Cup 98 campaign. ITV were already planning on showing their programme nearer Christmas time, but when they heard that BBC1 were showing theirs this week they moved it forward a couple of weeks. Nonetheless, not too many people tuned in to either.
ITV’s When England Played Argentina was probably the better of the two shows because it was ITV that actually showed the match live. By putting theirs first on Tuesday night, ITV probably thought that they could get the bigger audience. However it only drew an audience of 2.29 million. BBC1’s Where Were You? Passion, Pride and Penalties, shown the following night, had a bigger audience at 3.39 million.
Reviewer: Simon Wright
To make comments on this TV Summary, take a look at the Media Pub.
Subscribers can access the TV database by selecting “Television” from the drop-down box at the top of this page.
