0/5

1.6m for Hawke as TEN governs Sunday

TEN dominated Sunday viewing with 2.18m viewers for the unstoppable MasterChef and a solid 1.6m for its Hawke telemovie.

Network TEN dominated viewing last night with 2.18m viewers for the unstoppable MasterChef Australia and a solid 1.6m for its Hawke telemovie.

Another 840,000 watched Hawke: The Interview following the film. Together with 1.14m viewers for the season final of Merlin, TEN pulled a primary share of 31.4% over Seven’s 21.9% and Nine’s 20.4%. TEN ruled in the key demos last night as well as Total People.

Hawke peaked at 2m viewers and on top of excellent reviews walks away with its head held high -not an easy feat for one-off telemovies anymore. 

Commonwealth Games aside, Week 30 could prove to be TEN’s strongest all year.

Aside from News, that left RBT as the next highest rater of the night, on 1.44m.

Dancing with the Stars had to settle for 1.32m but it was up on last week. 60 Minutes just cleared the 1m barrier.

Aside from News, Little Dorrit was strongest for ABC1 on 611,000. Without Doctor Who the channel’s share tumbled.  Who Do You Think You Are? managed 244,000 for SBS ONE.

GO! gave Nine an extra 4.7% with The Big Bang Theory pulling 325,000, ahead of 7TWO’s 3.0% and ONE’s 2.0%.

TEN easily won the night.

Week 30

19 Responses

  1. Once again 10 has gone for the short verion, this would have made a more interesting 2 or 3 parter.

    Remember the albeit to brief Hamish & Andy special a few weeks back. That too could have gone at least another hour !

    10, you have some good stuff, don’t be scared to go against the current.

  2. While the movie was ok, the sex scene early on was almost vomit inducing. Why would they have thought anyone would want to see Bob and Blanche doing it. That is the scene that should have ended up on the cutting floor.

  3. I agree a lot was ommitted due to time constraints, there were several scenes that were cut entirely that would have cost a bit to have produced. Since the movie has now aired i can now reveal some of the production stills at oldtvgear.com/hawkem.html

  4. I was really looking forward to “Hawke”, but in the end i’d have to say I was disapointed. I was hoping for broader content in general and not just a focus on the good things that Hawke and Keating did for the country, but the bad things too. It lacked balance. It should have been a mini-series.

  5. I found the movie to be too sweeping and very rushed. Likewise it expected the viewer had previous knowledge of the subject matter and knew everyone who was involved in the story and the political climate of the era. It was a good try, but it needed far more substance and would have benefited from being a two-parter.

  6. @chk chk:: my thoughts too – good but not brilliant. More a series of vignettes than a cohesive story, I thought. Certainly not a show for those unfamiliar with those characters and events.

  7. I think the whole point of the story was the battles with Keating so on that ground it was a good movie, but it might have been better servied as a mini series, maybe 2x 2h eps so it could cover more. But that’s just my opinion.

    Congrats to TEN for the massive win for the night.

  8. I’ve posted elsewhere that I thought this telemovie was excellent. Congratulations to all involved, it was rivetting.

    @ Pete – the movie only had about one-and-a-half hours (excluding ads) to cover the years from 1977 – 1991. Given the time constraints, the movie had to concentrate on one theme, the ’91 leadership spill leading to Keating becoming PM. Bob Hawke was PM for nine years, it would take a 12 part mini-series to cover his life from the time he joined the ACTU to his election as PM, the policies he created, etc, to the time he lost the ALP leadership and with that, the Prime Ministership. In a way, it’s a shame it wasn’t developed into a mini-series, as Bob Hawke is a fascinating character and probably the greatest reformist PM this country has ever had. The list of his achievements which formed part of the end credits to the movie was very impressive indeed and a lot of our current prosperity is due to reforms his government made in the ’80’s. Even John Howard admitted that.

    The Hugh Riminton interview with Bob and Blanche afterwards was very good as well.

  9. They really needed longer to do justice to this story – I found it superficial, episodic and disjointed as they moved backwards and forwards in time. This was a mini series opportunity lost to the ABC while it’s drama department continues to drift sideways without a leader.

  10. It was fairly tedious as expected and since all politicians do is talk, regularly lie to voters and to each other, act as hypocrites, argue with each other, negotiate and stab each other in the back, politics is very tricky and difficult to dramatise and make compelling for entertainment, as people get a gutful of local and overseas politics and politicians on their TV, 7 days a week.

    It’s be good to see a new series of The Hollowmen on ABC. The West Wing show had a good sense of humour, but always rated abysmally.

  11. Maybe Hawke needed to be a bit longer to develop the story more but I thought it was boring. It focussed too much on Keating throwing him out and not enough on how he went about creating his policies. There have been some great political bio-pics in the past (Nixon, The Dismissal) but this one just wasn’t up to the standard I was expecting.

  12. I thought Hawke was excellent, and I’m glad it was well rewarded. Congratulations to all involved. I would like to think that there could be more great tele-movies and miniseries which are culturally relevant, entertaining and informative coming our way.

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