TV Viewing Summary W/E 29/03/98

ITV maintains its commanding viewing share of 33.4 % against BBC1’s 29 %, no doubt helped along by the ‘sending down’ of Deirdre Rashid in Sunday night’s Coronation Street which gave the Sunday episode its best ever audience figure of 17.61 million viewers.

We can draw several positive points from the caging of Rashid. Firstly, there is no longer a single person in the country still unable to spell Deirdre. Secondly, we get to see Margie Clark in Coro. Thirdly, we get to see Deirdre suffer. Bad points: Coronation Street is in places now verging on the ‘abysmally poor’ with its prison scenes (see Prisoner Cell Block H for further examples); Deirdre’s neck veins are definitely not going to stand up to the stress of 18 months incarceration; our Parliament has ridiculed itself by discussing the issue of Deirdre’s conviction. Still, Coronation Street achieved an average audience figure across its four episodes of 16.86 million while Eastenders scored an average of 14.24 million.

David Jason returns in yet another cop type drama, this time playing a retired MI6 agent. Like it says in the TV Times, “everything DJ stars in turns to gold” – and 11.58 million watched to prove it. Other drama to feature in this week’s top thirty includes Peak Practice (10.45 million), and Midsomer Murders (10.34 million).

The re-styled National Lottery Saturday show, now known as National Lottery Big Ticket, has failed to recapture the audience heights which it has previously experienced, being watched by only 8.34 million.

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Reviewer: Jim Sparkes

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