UK TV Charts - w/e 25th January 2009

A rundown of the Top 20 most popular UK TV programmes or series for the week ending Sunday 25th January 2009 collated from information compiled and presented by BARB. Note that figures for multi-episode TV broadcasts (ie soaps or other shows with more than one episode per week) are rounded up into an average figure for the series and are denoted in the chart by *

1 Coronation Street (ITV1)..................9.94 *
2 EastEnders (BBC1).........................8.53 *
3 Dancing On Ice (ITV1).....................7.78 *
4 Wild At Heart (ITV1)......................7.48
5 Emmerdale (ITV1)..........................7.37 *
6 Casualty (BBC1)...........................7.18
7 National Lottery: In It To Win It (BBC1)..6.96
8 Antiques Roadshow (BBC1)..................6.58
9 Unforgiven (ITV1).........................6.47
10 Lark Rise To Candleford (BBC1)............6.31
11 Hustle (BBC1).............................6.30
12 Harry Hill TV Burp Compilation (ITV1).....6.00
13 Trial and Retribution (ITV1)..............5.92
14 Holby City (BBC1).........................5.81
15 FA Cup Football (Saturday)(ITV1)..........5.48
16 The Bill (ITV1)...........................5.44 *
17 Hunter (BBC1).............................5.30
18 Inauguration of President Obama (BBC1)....5.16
19 Friday Night With Jonathan Ross (BBC1)....5.06
20 Total Wipeout (BBC1)......................5.05

Chart commentary: Another samey week in the chart with not much movement in the upper reaches and nothing hugely noticeable further down the listings. Hustle continues to impress with a performance which took it within a frustrating whisker of the Top 10 and two TV 'events' score highly - the Inauguration of President Obama pulled in a large early evening crowd, some football match or other (don't ask me!) dragged the punters in of a Saturday night on ITV. Elsewhere the return of Jonathan Ross to his Friday night BBC1 slot in the wake of the ludicrous 'Sachsgate' furore saw a strong 5 million plus audience tune in, possibly hoping they'd be able to phone in and complain about something they actually saw this time instead of just reading about it and being whipped up into a frenzy by the tabloids. Still no sign of a late resurgence for the ailing Demons which can only flounder way beneath the Top 20 wondering where and why it all went so very, very wrong...