Sydney loves Underbelly, Melbourne loves MasterChef.
There was a clear divide either in city-viewing tastes on Sunday as Sydney and Melbourne carved up their TV screens.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
Sydney loves Underbelly.
The drama that began life in Melbourne is now more-watched north of the Murray River than south.
624,000 viewers in Sydney watched the show last night, while 442,000 viewed in Melbourne. With the rest of the country, it was still enough to make the #1 show last night. A total of 1.67m / 1.61m watched the first / second episodes.
In contrast Melbourne prefers MasterChef Australia. 542,000 viewers watched in the south while 362,000 watched in Sydney (and the show is even produced in Sydney. 1.54m viewers watched around the country, winning its timeslot.
Elsewhere last night Seven’s best were Seven News (1.57m), Sunday Night (1.29m), Bones (1.24m).
At Nine Customs (1.21m), Send in the Dogs (1.14m) and 60 Minutes (1.11m) were its next best.
Merlin (852,000) and The Good Wife (824,000) were down on season averages for TEN.
Doctor Who was 909,000 with Foyle’s War rising to 907,000 following Doctor Who: Confidential (687,000).
Top Gear took 304,000 on GO! beating Who Do You Think You Are? (232,000) on SBS ONE.
Nine Network won the night.
11 Responses
@ KFed Agreed – and probably acknowledged by Nine which is why they’ve gone for 3 movies to keep the brand going. Underbelly could have been The Wire – but it’s not intelligent or thoughtful enough – just gratuitous sex and violence. A big disappointment.
Rushing the second and third Underbelly series’ into production without actually plotting out storylines seems to have been an error.
So glad to see the comments below – I totally agree! UB3 has been hugely disappointing but the eps last night were just gratuitious crap that failed to advance the plot at all. And poor Sigrid Thornton – her sex scene was achingly cringeworthy – as were the others frankly. It’s all just badly acted, poorly filmed, disjointed softcore porn without any actual titilation, plot or chemistry.
I want my two hours back!
I would have to agree, last nights episodes were stretching viewers patience wiht lots of pointless scenes. I got the feeling they were tryng set some sort of guniness book record for the most T & A shots or something. Way over the top.
I was surprised Nine scheduled 2 episodes of Underbelly on Mother’s Day – restaurants were all packed last night, so holding off the second episode could have got bigger scores next week.
I agree with Bryan G’s comments about the series pointlessness – not enough plotlines going on.
Underbore… i agree Byran G. Nothing has actually developed in the last 2 episodes. I thought John Ibrahim was a central figure in this series? but he hasn’t actually done anything.
And yes, so the cops are corrupt… we know that! So why not move it along and get to the bit where they start getting caught out!
Why did Nine need or want to show 2 eps of UB last night?
It will be interesting to see if the high ratings for “Underbelly” continue after last nights 2 episode outing.
Halfway through I realised that nothing had actually happened! No real drama, no major plot developments, no real story or character development. There were a couple of pointless scenes with a wasted Matt Day and Ian Smith; lots of shots of breasts (that added nothing); a scene at a nudist beach at sunset (that seemed irrelevant); a fight scene that was impossible to follow because of it’s shaky-cam and rapid cutting style, lots and lots of on-screen supers explaining who bit- part players were (the supers got sillier and sillier – even one that simply said “gotcha!”), and way too many montages, often cut to silly novelty music tracks.
Even though Firass Dirani (John Ibrahim) and Emma Booth (Kim Hollingsworth)as billed as the ‘leads’, nothing of any significance seems to be be happening to their characters (yet). And Dieter Brummer (as cop Trevor Haken) is just not strong enough, or interesting enough to really care about what he is doing (which isn’t much). When is the interesting – and important – part of this series going to actually begin?
The first series of “Underbelly” and, to a lesser extent, the second series, were based on events that were almost unbelievably brutal and shocking, with characters who acted in a way that we had never seen in our society – or on television – before. That was what was so compelling, even though we knew the outcome. By comparison ‘The Golden Mile’ seems to lack that suspense, that genuine dramatic power and those larger-than-life characters that a series like “Underbelly” needs.
I enjoy a bit of Underbelly but two eps back to back is overkills
I’m in Sydney and I enjoy watching Underbelly. Most of the time.
Last night’s second episode, however, had me reaching for the remote. What was with that poorly directed ep? Flashing up mock phone numbers during a lesbian kissing scene was just one element that had me worried we were on a downward slope. Another was the under-developed sexual romances that seemed to bloom out of the blue. I’m all for gratuitous TnA shots, but the ep last night took the cake.
Thankfully next week’s episode looks like we are back on track. But please, no more fillers.
Not surprising as it’s set in Sydney.