Finally we say “Goodbye” to another series of Casualty, making Saturday nights in marginally less depressing. Everything the BBC churned out in its first Casualty-free night seemed to be more upbeat, even the National Lottery. With Wogan at the helm, things could have gone one way really: better than any of the previous shamozzle of presenters. This week’s show had the double-barrelled capacity of not only old Tel, but Robbie Williams filling the revamped “now we have properly famous people, only” guest slot, attracting 11.58 million along the way.
The BBC’s main event of the evening, in the place of Casualty, was a showing of Beverly Hills Cop 3 (10.78 million), possibly one of the worst films ever made, with about the same entertainment value as a multiple car pile up. Still, logic decrees that mindless viewing must be replaced with more mindless viewing. ITV have unusually not jumped on the chance of burying the Beeb on a Saturday night, instead they put on another repeat of A Touch Of Frost (7.92 million) – so in the end we’re back to traditional Nineties viewing with a choice of imported garbage, or repeats.
In the absence of Casualty, Ballykissangel comes in as top drama of the week, watched by 10.91 million. The new two part period drama on ITV, Tess Of The D’Urbervilles attracted an audience of 9.10 million. Far better over on BBC1 was the Playing The Field; a new series, which thank God is not another period drama, watched by 8.88 million.
Big excitement in Emmerdale this week, as Scary Spice’s sister, Danielle Brown makes her TV ‘acting’ debut. Quite an inspired plan to get Emmerdale up there with the rest. Seems to have worked already with Thursday’s episode watched by 12.16 million. Perhaps there’s still a chance of persuading Lemmy to appear in Coronation Street?
The Street has actually slipped a bit this week, with one of its lowest average audience figures for a while, 15.51 million. I blame Deirdre Barlow. Her constant whining is becoming more than a little tedious, and this whole plot line looks like it’s going to be dragged out on the scale of the Titanic. This coupled with the dual relationship storms of Des/Sam and Steve/Fiona leaves us with not a lot of traditional ‘Coro Joy’ (with the exception of Toya pouring anti-freeze all over Curly Watts’ frozen prawns).
Eastenders attracted its usual average of 14.26 million; not much of interest going on in the East end these days. The arrival of the ‘Cosa Nostra’ in Albert Square has been pretty unremarkable. Presumably their presence is ultimately to serve as punch bags for the Mitchell boys; ‘listen to me pal, this is my manor etc. etc.’, thump, wallop.
Reviewer: Jim Sparkes
Subscribers can access the TV database by selecting “Television” from the drop-down box at the top of this page.
To make comments on this TV Summary, take a look at the Media Pub in the Media Village.
