7-day consolidated ratings – Page 29
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RatingsSky’s mighty Following
When, 150 years ago, Ebenezer Morley sat around a pub table to establish the Football League by saying “right then lads, get the pints in and let’s codify footie”, I don’t imagine a voice piped up at the back: “Don’t forget the Dow Jones Index.”
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RatingsFox cracks the Da Vinci code
If Leonardo Da Vinci even knew where or what South Wales was, I bet that, equipped as he was with something of a wild imagination, he would never have thought that one day a fictionalised account of his life would be filmed in Port Talbot.
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RatingsThe Geordies shore up MTV
The occasionally disturbing thing about having the music system on random play is that you get quite an eclectic menu.
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RatingsThe Doctor is in rude health
So Doctor Who has returned with another new assistant. For each new sidekick, everything always comes as a big surprise.
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RatingsGhosts make Really jump
I was in a bit of a bind this week after locking myself out while daringly rescuing a stray cat from the garden.
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RatingsA right royal success story
The top five recorded programmes of the week are all drama, with one exception: ITV’s documentary Our Queen (which makes her sound a bit like she comes from Yorkshire).
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RatingsFewer TVs but more viewing
The future: it’s confusion, wrapped in contradiction inside uncertainty. Wonderbra ad man Trevor Beattie says the 30-second ad is dead: long live the bite-sized, five-second ad, or, unhelpfully, the two-minute ad.
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RatingsThe Brits do for Derek
A wise sage once said to me: “You aren’t going outside dressed like that are you?” Days later, a different sage ventured that a repeat is only a repeat if you haven’t seen it; how true.
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RatingsExtra shine for Black Mirror
Getting into a lift in busy, cacophonous Tunis, with all its ancient Carthaginian history and recent rebelliousness, it feels rather incongruous to stand in an airtight box listening to classic piano for 20 seconds.
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RatingsTop tips for recording hits
I don’t write this column very often, so I hope you’ll indulge me in a list of five reasons why some programmes might increase their consolidated audience significantly more than others.
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RatingsHD boost for BBC shows
Just how smart are smart TVs? Do they know the capital of France, the average weight of cheese or why England’s cricket team can be brilliant then suddenly hopeless? Do they know why we are all here? Probably not.
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RatingsA matter of life and death
Murder among palm trees, prisons and serial killers whetted the viewers’ appetite this week and, by Jove, they lapped them all up with a spoon.
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RatingsBirth, death and taxes
Somewhere in the pages of Margaret Mitchell’s voluminous novel Gone With The Wind there is a line that laments: ‘Death and taxes and childbirth! There’s never a convenient time for any of them!’
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RatingsTomfoolery is the top draw
Ratings are strong for just the kind of madness that soothes the soul.
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RatingsITV makes a big Splash!
And we’re off. No sooner has Christmas finished than TV gets its glad rags on to entice us with all-new trimmings as each broadcaster seeks to get the year going with some oomph.
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RatingsRecording tips the scales
A study of ancient history reveals that in 2006, total live viewing on Christmas Day between 3pm and 11pm averaged 20.4 million.
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RatingsViewers flock to taboo TV
Congressman Brody’s taboos in Homeland are pretty dark, what with his central role in international terrorism aided by some barking plot wrangling – and oh, for goodness sake, just put those two ridiculous kids in jail and be done with it.
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RatingsNot the end of the world
If you recorded the Apocalypse, what would standing at the office watercooler the next day be like? Paper cups full of cockroaches probably, and no one to spoil the ending.
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RatingsBeware the grizzly bear
One of the most chanted refrains emanating from the US elections was the Obama camp’s “four more years”. In the even more ruthless world of American TV, it’s often a more plaintive “four more episodes”.
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FeaturesBake Off beats critics
Alas and alack the cakes, buns, bunting and icing sugar are but a memory. Alas and alack for BBC2 anyway, for everyone else the end of The Great British Bake Off might evoke a more bitter ‘thank goodness, get lost’.