TV Viewing Summary W/E 19/07/98

The television landscape now seems a bit bare without the World Cup to distract us – yes I know most of us are glad to see the back of those sponsorship credits that went with ITV’s coverage of the tournament – but suddenly things have got boring. The highest placing new programme is Duck Patrol, ITV’s latest attempt at situation comedy, which managed to pull in 10.3 million viewers. First episodes of new shows are always difficult to judge but I’d be very surprised if it could manage to keep the same number of viewers at the end of its run.

Meanwhile over on BBC1, Lakesiders airhead perfume girl Emma Boundy went to see a clairvoyant who astounded her with the vague information that somebody in her past had done something bad to her. This then sent Emma off in a flood of tears when she remembered that her fiance had done the dirty on her. Elsewhere, sad store detective Richard Milne was busy acting like Hitler over the theft of some cheap dresses at a department store. You can’t help but despise a person who seems so concerned about the most insignificant of things being stolen, I say more power to the shoplifters (er .. maybe not I don’t want to get sued).

Elsewhere it would appear that television executives have decided that the general public are mad about cute fluffy animals, what else could explain the programmes Animal Hospital Revisited and Animal Rescuers both appearing side by side in the top thirty programmes list with 7.53 million and 7.32 million viewers respectively. Original ideas are obviously at a premium when it comes to commissioning new shows.

Reviewer: Simon Wright

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