BBC’s Dementia Choir sings to 2m

Curve Media’s two-parter, in which the Line of Duty star raised awareness of music therapy for Alzheimer’s, launched 1m shy of BBC1’s 3m slot average.

The show struggled with all age demographics bar over-65s, experiencing a five-fold decrease in 16-24 share to 3.6% (20,000).

Over-65 share slightly increased to 16.2% (1.1m), with viewers from this demographic comprising more than half of the episode’s profile, according to Barb data from overnights.tv

Dementia Choir did open ahead of a similar offerings on BBC2, Gareth Malone’s Our School by the Tower, which crooned to 1.3m (6.9%) on a Monday at 9pm in March, while it was level with older Malone offerings including Best in Britain (1.9m/9%) and Great Choir Reunion (2m/9.3%), both of which played at 9pm on Tuesdays.

Opposite, C4 launched Optomen’s social experiment kids format When I Grow Up to 510,000 (3%), educating less than half the 1.2m (6.8%) slot average.

The series wasn’t close to pipping the opener of C4’s previous thematically comparable formats. It delivered half of last month’s The Great British School Swap, which aired in a Tuesday 9pm slot and one quarter of those who tuned in to the first Old People’s Home For 4 Year Olds (2.1m/10.9%) at 8pm in August 2017.

The show’s profile of 4-15-year olds doubled to 7.6% (40,000) from benchmark but over-65 profile went in the opposite direction from 31.8% to 23.2% (120,000).

9pm

ITV’s EasyJet: inside the Cockpit (ITN Productions) returned with 2.4m (14%), well shy of the 3.8m (19.6%) who flew in for the opener of series one on a Monday in August 2017.

The second episode of the fifth series of BBC1’s Ambulance rescued 3m (17.7%) but Dragonfly’s format lost 300,000 from last week’s opener.

Elsewhere, the penultimate episodes of Ryan Murphy’s Pose (200,000/1.2%) and Boundless’ Grand Designs (1.4m/8.4%) aired on BBC2 and C4 respectively, in line with previous weeks.

10pm

Across the 10pm hour, Firecracker Films’ Channel 5 doc three-parter My Extreme Drugs Diary kicked off with 410,000 (3.4%) tuning in to its examination of extreme heroin-taking.

This was shy of the 570,000 (4.4%) slot benchmark but defeated 8 Year Olds Smuggling Drugs (190,000/2.8%), which aired in an 11pm slot on a Tuesday in November.