TV Viewing Summary W/E 07/02/99

Channel 4’s much hyped new drama series Sex and the City bounded onto our screens this week and the opening episode had a very impressive 3.43 million viewers. This outperformed even the first episode from the much anticipated fifth series of E.R. which had 3.09 million viewers.

Staying on Channel 4, the also much-heralded debut of new Big Breakfast presenter Kelly Brook, who has replaced the oh so funny Denise Van Outen, helped the programme to increase it weekly reach. Around 5.2 million tuned into the show this week, this is up from 4.9 million for the same week last year. Both of the Big Breakfast‘s competitors recorded year on year falls in their weekly reach.

Over on Channel 5 it was the week after the explosion before, with the channel’s main soap opera Family Affairs coming to terms with the sudden reduction in cast members. With the Hart family managing to have the misfortune to all be on an exploding boat on Friday, a lot of attention was paid to how exactly the soap was going to carry on. Monday’s episode pulled in audience of 1.17 million and narrowly missed out on a place in Channel 5’s top ten programme list.

Reviewer: Simon Wright

Subscribers can access the TV database by selecting “Television” from the drop-down box at the top of this page.