Channel overview – Page 33
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RatingsNew year, new-look C4
Life after Big Brother was always going to be difficult; after this week Channel 4 might be thinking that life without it makes the 12 labours of Hercules look like boiling a kettle.
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RatingsA trip down memory lane
Apparently, the way to the nation’s hearts is to evoke memories of power cuts and only three TV channels - i.e. the 1970s.
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RatingsC4’s giant elf nabs top spot
It is no surprise that in this huge week, the top-rating shows appear around the edges of peak; that half of them are brand extensions; and that one of the highest-rating 9pm shows combined food and soap.
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RatingsEarly Christmas for Channel 4
BBC2’s Operation Mincemeat, the increasingly popular Miranda and a seasonal visit from Fred Claus feature in this week’s channel overview.
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RatingsChannels vie to find a voice
As the pillaging of the Event Season plunders audiences for the Big Two, other channels look to find a voice either by scheduling around them, where BBC2 has found some success on Mondays, or by playing the smart card
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RatingsFamily life is never easy
This week, there was the return of The Family, a documentary about an East London family as well as an epic saga of one man’s fictional life and family history. And then there was Miranda, back with her odd collection of friends to supplement a very daffy mother.
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RatingsTaking refuge from history
This week, Edwardian farmers vied with the reincarnation of 1970s suburban ploughing on BBC2, while Channel 4 scared us to death with the size of the national debt, only to invite us the next day to watch people literally drop another million quid.
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RatingsNo stumble on this Trip
If The Trip is a mock travel documentary, does that make it a Mockulogue? Elsewhere, MasterChef: The Professionals broiled its last this week as Kirstie Allsopp tried to get us to rethink how we refurbish.
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RatingsViewers take DIY option
James May’s Man Lab helped BBC2 secure victory over Channel 4 while the Apprentice’s spin-off series took an upswing.
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RatingsEating up the TV schedules
With so much cooking and general foodiness around, this week I felt like I had stumbled into one of Heston Blumenthal’s more exquisitely eccentric menus: a last minute change to the starter, which arrived a day early, followed by a main course of annoying suits, garnished with Preparation H, and ...
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RatingsCooking up a Grand Design
This week’s top 10 dominated by BBC2 contains stuff we Brits do best; watch people cook and talk about houses.
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RatingsSeven Days of sausages
Are education and Notting Hill the TV equivalent of sausage production? Sausages - lovely, but no one wants to see how they’re made. Education and Notting Hill - interesting, but few want the reality of them on telly.
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RatingsBuilding and baking success
Three Fs and a B sounds like my exam results, but here it encapsulates this week’s line-up: food, football, the few and building. Channel 4 launched new shows for Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, and Kevin McCloud guided us around more slightly over-ambitious building projects.
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RatingsBB and Proms take a bow
What have Rogers and Hammerstein and Arthur Schoenberg got in common? Very little, apart from being at opposite extremes of the BBC Proms season that ended this weekend. Also ending this week was Big Brother, whose grip on the C4 schedule was finally prised off.
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RatingsSex still sells but Dive sinks
‘Big Brother moves to 8pm for Sex Shock’. Calm down dears, it’s a schedule thing. In its heyday, C4’s schedule revolved around Big Brother; now we see the first signs of ignominy as three times this week it makes way for The Sex Education Show: Am I Normal? in the ...
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RatingsAlmighty start for ‘vicarcom’
BBC2’s 10pm comedy line-up this week began with the first episode of the new vicar sitcom Rev, slotting into Monday and attracting a promising 2.2 million/10.7%.
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RatingsCompeting for attention
As the World Cup parps on in South Africa, BBC2 and Channel 4 can defend and define themselves with their own events: Wimbledon and Big Brother. BBC2 even had the additional bonus of a new series of Top Gear.
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RatingsSuccess away from football
This week Channel 4 and BBC2 saw success at the two ends of the anti-World Cup spectrum - Big Brother for younger viewers and Springwatch for the discerning older crowd.
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RatingsFamiliarity beats novelty
With a whopping week on a bigger rival what do you play against it? A familiar schedule? Or is it an opportunity to try something new?