Digital-i TV Review

As with 3.8m viewers, 17% share, beeb pre-watershed drama Waterloo Road loses over a million from its launch the night before, primarily because on Thursday it runs into ITV1’s well established soap duo sitting line astern between 8 and 9 waiting for the newcomer; 6.6m for Emmerdale and 7.3m for Corrie. Read more…

A new series of BBC1 serial drama Waterloo Road kicked off at 8pm with a very respectable slot-winning 5m, 23% share, the channels biggest audience of the night.

However, whatever its own merits, I have to say I think it owed its good start at least in part to the fact that between 8 and 10 ITV ran a repeat episode of Poirot which with fewer than 3m viewers seems to have attracted the lowest ever peaktime audience to this franchise drama. Read more…

After the departure of the beebs Last of the Summer Wine at the weekend it was the turn of ITV drama veteran The Bill to face the final curtain last night after nearly 30 years of loyal service, and with a slot winning 4.4m it signed off pretty well with an audience considerably up on the 3.5m average it has attracted at 9pm since it was moved there from its traditional pre-watershed slot a year ago. Read more…

In peak on Monday night the first new edition of Marple since New Years Day – Agatha Christie’s Marple as ITV insist on calling it – did pretty well across two hours from 9pm. With an average of 4.7m viewers it pushed its primary opposition Who Do You Think You Are? on BBC1 below 5m for the first time in its current run and meant Channel 5’s movie, Jerry Maguire, was its least watched 9pm movie of the year with only 6ook. Read more…

Two important 9pm shows came to the end of their current run last night, The Hotel Inspector on Five and BBC1 drama Mistresses, and both went out on a high.

In the case of Mistresses it was the last ever episode and with 4.2m, 18% it won the slot and delivered the biggest audience of the 4 eps in its final series.

Hotel Inspector will be back I’m sure but rounded of its 6th series (2nd presenter in that period) with 2.1m which, you will not be surprised to hear, was a 9% share and also the most viewers of the run. Read more…

In late peak Wednesday, Ultimate Big Brother – a two week extension to the end of the ‘normal’ series – began with 3.2m (plus another 200k on the +1 channel) at 10pm, that compares with 4m for the final itself on Tuesday night.

Earlier in the evening ITV handed over peak to their first Champions League match of the season, a little over 4m sports fans, nearly 18% share joined them to see Spurs qualify for the competition proper. Read more…

Who Do You Think You Are? continues to dominate the key 9pm slot for BBC1 with 5.8m last night, a 23% share, 600k more than last Monday night and its biggest audience since the launch show two months ago. Helped to grow I suspect by the fact that ITV is struggling in the slot with only 2.6m for a Real Crime doc, marginally behind Dragons Den on BBC2 which was watched by 2.7m. Read more…

Celebrity Masterchef was watched by its highest ever audience last night, 6.2m at 8pm on BBC1, nearly a million more than the previous high in 2009.

However, much as those involved would like to believe this achievement was down to their undoubted genious I suspect the presence of a football match on ITV1 which was watched by less than 4m, rather than the 6 or 7 million plus from soaps which normally play mid-evening on Thursday, was the primary factor. Still, a great platform for tonights Masterchef final. Read more…

No fewer than three peaktime factual series came to the end of their runs last night, and with slightly contrasting fortunes.

On BBC1 the consumer series Secret Tourist (Outline Productions) ended on a high with 4m viewers, 18% share – its biggest audience of the 4 episodes – while on Beeb2 the third episode of history series The Normans finished on 2.5m, 12% – up on ep 2 a little but down from 3m opener – and on ITV1 the revived ‘blue flashing light’ series Police Camera Action (Optomen) attracted its lowest of the run, 3.2m, 15%, albeit only marginally. Read more…

BBC1’s latest primetime drama series, The Deep, continues to slide gently beneath the waves, down 700k week on week – and well over a million since it launched – with 3.8m viewers, plus another 200k on BBC HD channel.

This decline allowed competing dramas in the 9pm slot on both ITV1 and Channel 5 to improve, and with 3.3m viewers The Bill was above 3m for the first time since April. CSI Miami put on 200k viewers compared to last Tuesday, 2.1m Read more…