UK TV Charts - w/e 22nd February 2009

With apologies for the late posting, here's the rundown of the Top 20 most popular UK TV programmes or series for the week ending Sunday 22nd February 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 * News broadcasts are excluded from the figures.

1) Coronation Street (ITV1)..................10.33 *
2) Dancing On Ice (ITV1).......................9.17 *
3) EastEnders (BBC1)...........................8.80 *
4) Whitechapel (ITV1)..........................8.72
5) Wild At Heart (ITV1)........................8.21
6) Emmerdale (ITV1)............................7.47 *
7) Let's Dance For Comic Relief (BBC1).........7.06
8) Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway(ITV1).6.81
9) Casualty (BBC1).............................6.37
10) Antiques Roadshow (BBC1)....................6.35
11) Lark Rise To Candleford (BBC1)..............6.32
12) Taggart (ITV1)..............................5.97
13) National Lottery draws (Saturday) (BBC1)....5.93
14) Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC1)............5.64
15) Holby City (BBC1)...........................5.57
16) The Brit Awards (ITV1)......................5.49
17) Mistresses (BBC1)...........................5.28
18) Billy Connolly's Journey To The Edge of the
World (ITV1)....5.19
19) (The Bill (ITV1).............................4.92
19) (Piers Morgan's Life Stories (ITV1)..........4.92

Chart commentary: A few new titles livening up the chart this week. 'Let's Dance For Comic Relief' may be all or a good cause, yada yada but at the end of the day it's just a conveniently easy excuse for BBC1 to air a 'Strictly' clone for a few weeks - and sadly the UK public are falling for it as the show rates increasingly well week on week. Cause for alarm over at ITV (a familiar feeling these days) as Geordie golden boys-cum-jumped-up kid's TV presenters Ant and Dec find their 'takeaway' being...er...taken away by less viewers this year. Time for some new ideas, eh boys? The second series of BBC1 drama 'Mistresses' scores respectable numbers for its first new episode and 'Lark Rise' continues to perform strongly on Sunday nights, providing the sort of soft, undemanding drama ITV have now abandoned, it seems. It's no great surprise to hear the series has been renewed for a third run next year. I'm severely miffed to find myself having to type the dreaded P**rs M**rg*an's name again as his down-market new Sunday night interview show slips into the bottom of the Top 20. His last series, three episodes of the odious creep traipsing around the world, fell fast after a strong start and we can only hope for the same with this new show - although Morgan's shrewd guest roster of ITV chav favourites like Sharon Osbourne and Jordan will probably bring in audiences big enough for M*rg*an to continue to crow about how well he's doing compared to Jonathan Ross and his infinitely better Friday night show (which no longer troubles the chart after its reappearance a few weeks back). Stuff doesn't like M*rg*n 'round 'ere... Whither Harry Hill and his Tv Burp? A few weeks ago the show was comfortably inside the Top Ten every week; ITV have shunted it forward to a slot just after 6pm to accommodate the new flop Chris Tarrant quiz whose name has temporarily escaped me - and in the process Harry's now struggling with just over 4 million and is shaded out of the Top 20. And ITV wonder where it all went wrong when they can't even schedule their few hit shows properly...