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Serangoon Road up against public affairs hits

Ratings: ABC's new drama was overshadowed by two public affairs shows, but was still in the game, in a night dominated by Seven.

5rdseABC’s new drama Serangoon Road was overshadowed by two public affairs shows starting late but managed 720,000 viewers, more than twice TEN’s Ripper Street audience.

As a launch it’s just below the premiere of The Time of our Lives in June (747,000) which still managed to find a loyal audience, but viewers will need to connect to its distant and period setting.

Seven’s X Factor topped the night with 1.47m, well above the first final for Australia’s Got Talent which slipped below the magic million to 982,000.

Seven comfortably won the night, winning all primetime slots, with a network share of 35.5% then Nine 28.6%, ABC and TEN tied on 15.5%, and SBS was 5.0%.

Following The X Factor for Seven were Seven News (1.25m), Sunday Night (1.22m), Bones (798,000) and Castle (522,000 / 304,000).

Nine News (1.19m) was best for Nine then 60 Minutes (1.13m), Australia’s Got Talent (982,000) and Movie: Unknown (567,000).

ABC News (856,000) led ABC1 followed by Supersized Earth (735,000), Serangoon Road (720,000), Compass (348,000) and Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook (271,000).

A Modern Family repeat was best on TEN at 531,000 / 453,000 then TEN Eyewitness News (472,000), Great Bear Stakeout with Billy Connolly proved to be lower than last Sunday’s Bachelor at 410,000, The Simpsons was 385,000, Ripper Street finished on just 323,000 and Formula One was 342,000 in 3 cities.

A repeat of Machu Picchu Decoded pulled 375,000 for SBS ONE followed by World News Australia (236,000), The Observer Effect (106,000) and a repeat of Once Upon a Time in Cabramatta (91,000).

ABC2’s Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom (277,000) topped multichannels.

Insiders: 153,000 / 96,000 / 37,000
The Bolt Report: 96,000 / 94,000

OzTAM Overnights: Sunday 22 September 2013

17 Responses

  1. The widow hiring the detective on a pretence to solve her husband’s murder is the oldest, hoariest set up there is – yet it’s all that passes for a concept in Serangoon Road. Hany’s character is too stupid to see it, so he’s a pretty lousy detective. The first episode case was wafer thin and entirely predictable. And nothing in the art direction, styling, dialogue or performances even remotely suggests the mid 60s. Spare yourself and download a few old Bogie movies.

  2. Serangoon Road is pretty rough. It’s not Crownies bad, but it’s not real good either.

    The plot was pretty thin, as are most of the characters and the acting lacked much skill or emotional involvement. The open shirt with singlet thing became ridiculous pretty quick too. The morning after a hard night out, fine, but in almost every scene, every day?

    It might improve, but if so it’d better happen quickly.

  3. Everyone is very picky today. Anything to do with the fact it was on ABC. I thought Serangoon was reasonable. I will watch it again next week. Its a refreshing change as I absolutely refuse to watch another talent/reality show.

    Its not as if we are served high quality drama from the commercial channels. Just chill out, relax and maybe enjoy it.

  4. AGT started with a bang last night but the standard of acts overall was disappointing. A lot of great acts must have been culled for some of the crap last night.
    Serangoon Road was OK but I agree about the cars. The all were buffed too showroom finish & some of the small things like the tuxedo that just happened to fit like it was made for him & the final underwater scene took away some credibility. Looks like Don Hany is in for a lot of punches to the face going by next week’s promo.
    Overall though I would give it another go.

  5. As usual I concur with Victor. I wonder how that script (for starters) got past the 7 Executive Producers? What is everyone doing? The twitterverse had a well-deserved field day. LMAO.

  6. Nothing of interest to me on Sundays. Wouldn’t expect anything more for Seragoon given the competitive timeslot. Ten lost numbers without The Bachelor but in the long run the show will benefit with less competition on Wednesdays.

  7. overseas the AGT franchise is changing the format so that there are more auditions and less ‘live’ finals. when auditions were scheduled for one episode per week i thought the same was happening here, which would be a good move seeing as the 2012 season was so dragged out, leading to its demise on 7. but last night julia said there would be 6 weeks of finals, meaning it will be just as dragged out. i think the ratings will bomb from here.

  8. Gave Serangoon Road a look after your review last week David. But let’s just be honest about it. This is the worst ABC show since Crownies. The writing is woeful, the casting dubious, the exterior set paper thin not to mention Don Hany’s hair style. It is 1964 and it looks like he’s just stepped out of a café in Bondi. The biggest problem is the show has no authenticity, no reality and no context. I suspect the Singapore government just had a whole lot of subsidy to spend, HBO Asia wanted to so something local and the ABC came to the party for political and not creative decisions. Such a lost opportunity. The ABC should be embarrassed and its Board should be investigating. Heads should roll.

  9. I must say, Julia Morris is the best thing to ever happen to Australia’s Got Talent. To have a comedian & someone as quick witted as her host the show – absolutely brilliant!

    It was quite a good show – but you have to wonder how the likes of Scott Carnes & that opera singer got through. I guess they have to make their faves stand out…

    Dami is the only one I really care about on X Factor.

    Side note – Dannii & Nat are terrible judges.

  10. I don’t expect Serangoon Road to improve in the ratings, it will just retain the 650k who will watch whatever is on the ABC without ads. Competition on Sunday nights is going to increase as the contest shows build up to the finish and new shows start.

    Serangoon Road’s writing was poor .They failed to exposition the setting (or the title) and the plotting and dialogue were awful. It’s a HBO Asia/ABC production with things skewed to that their target audiences (supposedly) with people doing dreadful fake accents. And worst of off it just looks like it is show on an Indonesian sound stage, giving it 80s production values. It was just brown and visually boring (unless you like Hany in a sweaty singlet).

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