so basically Robbie is wrong, I'm fine with that

right I'm off for go karting fun, speak to all on Monday

Just 2.00m behind Emmerdale excluding +1 yesterday.

Indeed, right up until the early nineties as well. There was Conjugal Rights with Gwen Taylor in 1993, which doesn't even have a Wikipedia page, but I remember getting well over ten million viewers throughout its run. Up until the early nineties, pre-watershed at least, you could probably argue ITV's sitcoms were as good as the Beeb's. After the watershed it was a bit different but ITV had the Sunday 10pm slot which did good business.

It seemed to go wrong for them in the mid-nineties but some of that could be down to the schedules becoming saturated by drama so there was less space for them, 8.30 became the only slot available. I remember Beryl Vertue saying that one problem they had with Is It Legal was that it followed The Bill and was preceded by another drama and that wasn't neccessarily the best way to find an audience who would appreciate it.

Of course, it was thanks to Doctor In The House and On The Buses that LWT actually managed to succeed, they were the only shows doing anything for them in their shaky early years.


You're right to say that sitcoms used to run all the time - Doctor In The House used to run six months a year every year with a huge team of writers. But then the same happens with other types of programmes, dramas used to run for thirteen or even 26 episodes a year with big teams of writers and these days they generally don't outside the soaps. No doubt much of this is because a lot of the stars of sitcoms now write them as well. It's seemingly a creative decision, and certainly there have been plenty of successes in this form.

Of course, a decade or so Saturday night light entertainment and science fiction were both considered to be a dead duck and both genres have since enjoyed a huge renaissance so there's still hope for the family sitcom.


The New Statesman was always going to get lower ratings, it was at 10pm, and Outside Edge was never going to be mainstream enough to get enormous ratings. We really liked The Upper Hand, at the start at least, we thought it was great fun - and it lasted as long as it did because there were a trillion American episodes to adapt.


The episodes in early 1993 were the final series which was shown on Sunday nights, though it was booted around the schedules a bit with ITV shuffling everything round to avoid a clash with One Foot In The Grave. It was running out of steam then, as mentioned its glory days were at the turn of the nineties. The 1993 special, and the 1994 run, was repeats.

The last time I remember ITV showing Watching was a single episode in 1997 as a tribute to Jim Hitchmough the writer, who'd died.

Maybe the Voice bit at the end hooked the viewes in

So Misdomer Murders rates higher than Silent Witness, yet Robbie labelled the Midsomer rating poor. Surely then SW rating is poor also. Both timeshift you know, but only one of them was critised in their overnight.

Dissapointing that Birds dropped, but still 7m+ is good for ITV.

I'll ask the other question - why bother making Sherlock: The Movie? What is the obsession with making movies from every TV show?

As you say, the episodes are feature length anyway, and it hardly looks like they need a bigger budget to tell their stories, does it? So unless everyone's just after a fat payday, what's the appeal of a movie rather than 3 more TV episodes?!

That's a bit defeatest isn't it, one off episode (although in reality it wasn't that bad at all)and you've give up. If you did that for every TV show you'd end up watching nothing by the end.

Shame about Dolphins and Silent Witness falling, but everything was down last night for one reason or another, at least SW timeshifts very well as shown by last week's rating and I think last year it added more on average than all but Doctor Who.

Excellent official rating for Birds of a Feather, I wish I could get into it but I'm struggling. I used to like it and it's not like awful scripts are enough to put me off as long as the actors are good enough, I love Vicious for example, but it's not working for me.

That was partly down to the strength of a regionalised ITV. Thames TV made many of ITV's sitcoms, and Yorkshire TV too. Ideas, commissioning and financing would come from all ITV regions for all genres. LWT were famous for weekend LE shows and Friday night drama series' that smashed the opposition out of the water. ITV had hundreds of innovative people all working hard in different regions making quality programmes for network broadcast. Since ITV have become National, they rel;y on the same people and the same ideas which is why I believe they are less successful now than they were 15 years ago. Back in the 80's and early 90's, ITV really was the best broadcaster of TV programmes in the UK. And I personally miss it.

I knew SW would end up with nearly 8m and beat Benidorm. It did so with ease - 750k ahead.

Article from BBC Media Centre on the viewing figures of Hinterland, on BBC Wales. 350k in Wales seems ok.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/lat...d-figures.html

Also a new drama with David Morrissey.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/lat...he-driver.html

Well done Benidorm and BOAF for making 1st and 4th place on the list of officials.

Fabulous ratings across the board - why cant more nights be like this. Big timeshifts for the BOAF/Benidorm and SW and even the Dolphins and Mastermind at 5m. Nothing for anybody to complain about really.

Yes, 1st and 5th entirely creditable.

For those who say the BBC did not see the BOAF scripts before turning them down, may I remind you all of a One Show and a This Morning interview where both Linda Robson and Pauline Quirke said quite categorically and definitively that "The scripts were on the desk somewhere in the BBC, fingers crossed they'll like them. If not, another broadcaster may like them".

The BBC DID see the scripts. They felt the plotline of the series could easily be condensed into a Christmas special and that is what was offered. The BBC can not and do not make any decision on any programme if they do not have a provisional script or a programme format or layout to go by.

To be fair though if you are someone not too bothered about a program and then you see something you dont like you probably would give up. I did not much like last nights Birds but I will keep watching as I am interested and hoping for better.

Surely anyone can see the unfairness in one show rating 750k above its competitor yet being ranked behind it by 20,000 because the other was shown twice and on different channels?

I think Robbie and HdV should just get a room.

I can. But I'm fed up worrying about it. Just add on the BBC3 figures for EastEnders to compensate!

Another example of them getting it wrong then isnt it?

We've been though all this, you do it your way and others would look at it their way. Most ratings reported are being combined together anyway with +1, so you are the minority who has a problem with it.

Nobody is going to chance your way of looking at it, so what's the point.

At the moment yes. The BBC were wrong to turn down BOAF. Perhaps in 6 weeks time we feel differently.

Great figure for Hinterland on BBC1 Wales - 350k. Might not seem like much but when 6N rugby hits 800k with 70% share, then it looks a whole lot better.

I hope the BBC end up showing it nation-wide at some point.

Indeed!

I dont think it will make much of a difference. Even in a worst case scenario where Birds falls to 4m consolidated (unlikely) they would still have a large average overall. I think we are talking about whether it is a mega hit or just a hit - either way BBC look daft.