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Strong night for Utopia, The Bachelor -but Seven wins Wednesday

Ratings: ABC comedy wins its timeslot, while TEN's reality show is working as a mid-week drawcard.

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The return of Working Dog’s Utopia won its timeslot for ABC last night at 779,000 for ABC, beating its 2014 debut by a mere 1,000 viewers.

There was also good news for TEN’s Bachelor winning its timeslot at 877,000 viewers, down slightly on last week’s 922,000.

But the night was won by Seven with The Force its strongest entertainment show at 850,000.

Seven network won with 28.6%, Nine 26.2%, ABC 20.7%, TEN 18.4% and SBS 6.0%.

Seven News (1.01m / 974,000) was best for Seven then The Force (850,000), Border Security (811,000), Home and Away (783,000), Criminal Minds (760,000 / 546,000) and Million Dollar Minute (466,000).

Nine News (1.12m / 1.08m) topped the night for Nine then A Current Affair (1.00m), The Hotplate (775,000), Hot Seat (641,000) and World’s Most Expensive Food (441,000). The Mysteries of Laura was just 220,000.

ABC News (854,000) led for ABC followed by Utopia (779,000), 7:30 (744,000), The Weekly with Charlie Pickering (689,000), How Not to Behave (481,000), Adam Hills: The Last Leg (461,000) and Antiques Roadshow (353,000).

The Bachelor (877,000) scored for TEN. The Project was 662,000 / 491,000), TEN Eyewitness News was 566,000), Madam Secretary was 349,000 and Elementary was just 162,000.

Operation Grand Canyon with Dan Snow was 236,000 on SBS followed by 24 Hours in Police Custody (205,000), Bosch (161,000) and SBS World News (149,000).

ABC2’s Peter Rabbit led multichannels with 282,000.

Sunrise: 331,000
Today: 291,000
ABC News Breakfast: 85,000 / 46,000

OzTAM Overnights: Wednesday 19 August 2015

Corrected.

11 Responses

  1. Bosch is such a great series…do people just ignore it because it is on SBS…my sister has just caught up with it and is really enjoying it…
    And The Mysteries of Laura was wrecked by Nine straight up…as everyone predicted…which is also a shame…I could not commit to double episodes…

  2. Do you think the ABC execs tripping over themselves to recommission the same show (with the same jokes) realise they are the inspiration for this series? Perhaps they should call a meeting to discuss?

    1. They probably had a meeting at which it was decided to cut costs by recycling last years script as part of their commitment to reducing their carbon footprint/emissions reduction target. Win win all round I guess?

  3. Utopia……never in the field of human bureaucracy have so many spent so much achieving so little for so few………more a documentary really

    1. Ha!
      So true.
      Having myself spent some time working in the Public Service, yes, Utopia is indeed bordering on a documentary.
      Some of the scenarios are uncannily realistic.

  4. First time watching Utopia and I thought it was quite good. Then I went back and watched S1 from the start and noticed it’s very sitcom-my where everything basically resets the next episode.

    As @barrington mentioned a little bit of character development would be welcomed or even just knowing a bit more about the characters other than they work at NBA and most of them acting kind of silly.

  5. First run Madam Secretary hardly set the ratings world on fire but for Ten to then just lazily repeat episodes in a prime slot straight after Bachelor is bombing. This needs to change and also expect Laura on Nine to start at 10.30 next week on those numbers.

  6. I didn’t laugh once during Utopia. I know comedy is subjective, but I don’t find this show funny or clever – it’s mildly (mindlessly) entertaining at best. To me the show treads water. Nothing develops – the plot doesn’t develop, the characters don’t develop, they just play their tropes every episode and it’s basically the same story every episode.

    1. Yes, I was underwhelmed. It wasn’t bad but I could just watch S1 (or one ep) again for the same effect. I actually groaned when they used the plot device of moving to a new building to have Sitch spend another entire episode of not receiving emails and not being able to get into the office again.

      Now that I think about it, I don’t think I watched all of S1 either because it was basically the same plot each week.

    2. If you’ve ever worked for the government, you’ll know that Utopia is right on the money.

      There’s no plot to develop because the whole point of the Public Service is to do nothing, but make it appear like you’re doing something.

      There’s no character development because public servants are the world’s most boring people.

    3. I liked the Very Fast Train episode, that actually satirised something well.
      The rest I have found to be the same characters making the same office jokes, and I lost interest quickly.

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