UK TV Charts - w/e 19th April 2009

Here's the rundown of the Top 20 most popular UK TV programmes or series for the week ending Sunday 19th April 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) Britain's Got Talent (ITV1)...............12.95
2) Coronation Street (ITV1)...................9.18 *
3) EastEnders (BBC1)..........................8.17 *
4) The Apprentice (BBC1)......................7.86
5) UEFA Champions League Football (ITV1)......7.81
6) Emmerdale (ITV1)...........................6.64 *
7) Heartbeat (ITV1)...........................6.24
8) Casualty (BBC1)............................6.14
9) (FA Cup (ITV1)..............................5.59
9) (Beat The Star (ITV1).......................5.59
11) Holby City (BBC1)..........................5.36
12) Countryfile (BBC1).........................5.16
13) The Bill (ITV1)............................5.03 *
14) Primeval (ITV1)............................4.97
15) Film: King Arthur (BBC1)...................4.80
16) All The Small Things (BBC1)................4.73
17) Tonight's The Night (BBC1).................4.69
18) Hell's Kitchen (ITV1)......................4.68 *
19) Waterloo Road (BBC1).......................4.60
20) My Family (BBC1)...........................4.58 *

Chart commentary: A pretty unexceptional chart this week with C*w*ll's parade of grotesques still proving unaccountably fascinating to nearly thirteen million people. I just despair. The soaps are posting lower figures than usual and good to see Primeval and The Bill rallying; Primeval's figures remain on the rise (while Saturday night BBC rival Robin Hood is sinking alarmingly....now just outside the Top 20 with barely four million viewers)and with ITV undoing its recent various commissioning decisions (Wild At Heart, axed last month, has just been given the go-ahead for a new series and Demons, despite being rubbish, still hasn't been formally cancelled!) maybe the show's doing enough to justify another shot next year (or, more likely, the year after). A few new entries in the chart but none of them hugely inspiring. John Barrowman's new festival of cheese, Tonight's The Night, makes a solid start to its run and I am mortified to see the new series of Beat the Star hosted by the despicable, dreadful V*rn*n K*y nab a top ten slot. Top ten!! What are you people doing?? You should be throwing things at the screen when he turns up, not watching his programmes! Stop it right away! The British public remain hugely disinterested in the feeble Hell's Kitchen despite the near-hysteria of the tabloids and downmarket TV magazine programmes and its reasonable showing in this week's chart doesn't reflect the generally-poor viewing figures it's been achieving, as upper-end figures for the first edition have artificially inflated its popularity. So there.