It was an Easter of mixed fortunes for SF and fantasy on the gogglebox, and here are the cold hard facts:
Doctor Who
Initial BBC1 airing: 8.4 million
BBC HD: 0.184 million
BBC3 Sunday repeat: 0.758 million
Comment: A lot of the press made a big deal out of Britain’s Got Attention Seekers beating Who on Saturday, which is fair comment. But the shows weren't up against each other; Who comfortably beat its competition in the time slot (see Primeval below) and delivered a figure that would have been happily received for a season opener. You can’t help feeling, though, that with no new series of Who on this year, the figure is slightly disappointing. Though how many UK dramas would love to be in the position of calling 8.4 million slightly disappointing? And besides, how many people actually watched Britain’s Got Loonies rather than just having it on as background noise?
On the other hand the special broke the record for people watching the BBC HD channel, and it was also the most watched show on iPlayer for Sunday and Monday.
Primeval
Initial ITV1 airing: 2.71 million
ITV2 Sunday screening: 0.767 million
ITV’s plucky little dino-show was trounced by Doctor Who and sunk to its lowest ever figure. Bad scheduling decision by ITV (especially for such a great episode). However, Primeval could claim it beat Doctor Who on the Sunday multichannel repeats. It also beat UK premiere screenings of Supernatural (0.675 million) and Lost (0.664 million – a poor figure for Sky1), which is a pretty damned good result. Seems that people who missed it because of Doctor Who were willing to seek it out elsewhere.
Red Dwarf
Part one, Dave, Friday: 2.06 million (2.4 million including Dave Ja Vu)
Part two, Dave, Saturday: 0.937 million (1.2 million including Dave Ja Vu)
Part three, Dave, Sunday: 1.02 million (1.2 million including Dave Ja Vu)
The huge drop for episode two might look like a disaster but let’s put things in perspective. Part two was still the second most watched show on multichannel TV for the day, and the mini-series rallied for part three. Make no mistake, Dave will be very pleased with these figures – its average audience is 0.266 million.
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