TEN’s drama baby breathing
As a drama baby Offspring is now slapped and breathing. Mark Latham's 60 Minutes story worked as a curiosity piece, but deserved to be slapped.
- Published by David Knox
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TEN’s new drama baby Offspring premiered to an average of 1.12m viewers last night.
With several Sunday shows spanning across different timeslots it is difficult to make head to head comparisons.
TEN will be buoyed by a good result in demos for the Telemovie, but it also suffered a Total People drop from the lead in of 1.43m for Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation, despite a slew of network publicity. The hard yards begin now.
The panel show even won its timeslot beating 60 Minutes widely-publicised Mark Latham story, which was third at 1.31m. Both were up on previous figures. After a promise of insight, ultimately it delivered nothing to campaign machinations, even interviewing an irrelevant Pauline Hanson. The segment rose to 1.43m while on air, before dropping away.
Dancing with the Stars (1.36m) helped Seven win the night along with the excellent 1.62m for Seven News and Sunday Night (1.33m) which also won its slot.
Best for the ABC was Life on 959,000 and Who Do You Think You Are for SBS on 321,000.
Digital channels did good business with a 4.6% share for GO! and 4.1% for 7TWO. Top Gear‘s 266,000 was the top multichannel show.
The Seven Network won Sunday.
30 Responses
I’m surprised some many people liked it – I have to be honest and say it felt like a mashup of the last ten years of Australian drama. Mix of family dsyfunction, slight edge of crime, young-ish inner city cool things with a medical setting to help give life and death moments.
I also continue to be annoyed by the flighty-ness of the voice over that revolves completely around men. The baby in the pub at the end was stupid, especially when the doctor endorsed it, when only two ad breaks ago, it almost died.
I think in attempting quirky the show jumps too wildly from comic pratfalls to dark and serious. I also agree that the continued hiring of three or four actors in Australian drama landscape is lazy. Surely we have a okay young actors who could fill these roles?
Offspring will replay 12pm this Friday.
Well I will eat my words….I had originally commented that I wouldn’t be making time for this – I did and thorooghly enjoyed it.
However, please make that moron singer put some shoes on for god’s sake! What publican is going to risk a fine or possible shut down so some d-head can come into their pub sans shoes!?
Hmmm 1.12 Million viewers was a fair bit less than I thought Offspring would get considering the Marketting pull it got, particularly in Melbourne! The bad news is that it got that result against pretty much no competition.
That being said it was quite good and the general verdict is that most enjoyed it which means it may get some more viewers by the most effective type of marketting and one that doesn’t cost a cent ..Word of Mouth.
Lets hope it builds and people get behind it and TEN took a risk on a non cop show, if this rates than the other networks may consider giving us something that doesnt involved detectives and murders! I really enjoyed Offspring and hope tis audience builds!
I do not feel Offspring was ‘over promoted’….the ads are what got me interested in watching it…..and to those people who live sheltered lives….there are a lot of ex hubbies like that out there…..
Me ….I loved everything about the show….it was pacey ….funny…..great casting….good directing….lovely costuming…..loved the camera work…..
Well produced……funny ….dramatic….quirky…..Just plain ‘all good’
Ten’s drama baby may be breathing on it’s premiere episode but its obvious female skew and the fact it’s another lame Edwards production will have it on life support within a few weeks.
Are there really only about 10 decent actors in Australia? The cross over in casts between Offspring, Tangle, Secret Life, 30 Seconds, Underbelly etal is getting silly – excellent though she is, its hard to work out which nightmare sister character Kat Stewart is playing this week.
The casting agents certainly didn’t do much to earn their money.
Ps – I agree that Offspring is trying just a little too hard in the quirky stakes, but it’s still better than another police drama.
I agree that there were a lot of half baked story lines in Offspring, but it was a pilot episode that was obviously good enough to get the show commissioned. I think it’s great to see and I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops.
Also do the ratings count the free iTunes downloads and streams from the Ten website? It would be interesting to know the additional figures from those avenues.
Offspring turned out to be ok, but it isn’t the best show around but is better than the good wife. I think Cops L.A.C will be better.
@PD – I agree. I like “quirky” but not if it seems to be artificial. The exploding ex-husband was annoying and will hopefully be written out soon. Still, good to see some decent Aussie adult drama again.
I missed the first part of Offspring as I was watching DWTS. Caught one of the main plot lines with the baby and the male doctor’s missing wife and I think the daughter. And then watched the ending with the crazy ex-husband.
I liked some of the show and think the acting is pretty good, but there’s a lot of stuff going that could be bordering on too many storylines.
@Craig, i’m talking about the part where nina found out her friends baby was her fathers was at the 1hr point and could have been used as the end of the episode as a hook for the following week. and then the next scene the narration started talking about some metaphor about dogs and with the music and all it just felt like the start of a new episode.
but even if it didn’t i think it still would have been worth using the golden opportunity of following the MC finale. it could have been the difference of smash hit or flop.
I forgot about Mark Latham 😆
salf – I didn’t see a clear separating after 1 hour of Offspring. I think it worked as a 2 hour telemovie.
Life on ABC is great, good to see people are watching, just a shame it’s not in HD.
@ Adam: It continues Sundays at 8.30pm (single episodes).
Offspring felt like a hodge-podge of half-thought out ideas. Hopefully it can fix its problems and become a dependable hour of television, if it keeps try to force it’s ‘quirkiness’ on us at every turn though I see it turning a lot of people off.
I do actually think that Ten’s completely OTT promoing of the show probably hurt the show. I had seen a preview and told many people how much I enjoyed it and was usually given, “Oh, the one with the ads on all the time?” as a response.
Nine knows that if it goes for the lowest common denominator aka Mark Latham, it will get a ratings boost.
Congratulations to Ten for taking this risk and making it work, once again leading the way. The big message from this (and Underbelly) is that Australian drama can win 830 Sunday, and a hit Australian drama can help a network win the week ( I refer to the timidly programmed Rafters of course). I would strongly argue that event style Aussie drama on Sundays is strategically the way forward for all the networks – it’s a no brainer really so I hope we see more of it.
I would like to think the end of the telemovie was structured in such a way to deliberately get some credits onto the screen despite Ten’s no-credits policy.
Anyone else think this was a clever ploy? or is it nothing to be read into…
Ten would be over the moon! 50%+ shares in all key demos, wow! No one over 50 seemed to watch though.
This show needs broader appeal to succeed which is something it is severely lacking in.
I didn’t mind Offspring, although it’s a bit quirky. The ex hubby exploding things was so strange and unexpected it made me laugh. Not sure if I was supposed to be laughing though.
I thought the link from baby being born to saying “it was a real estate cruise. What’s your dad’s name?” and voila – it’s your dad’s baby! was pretty ridiculous.
When is this continuing? I have not heard what days or have I missed it?
Offspring was not a bad show, but I just don’t think keeping it as a 2 hour launch was the right thing (I’m aware it was initially slated as a 2-hour telemovie) to do.
ten would be disappointed with those total people figures for offspring if the quantity of promotions is anything to go by the show was supposed to be their big hope for the back end of the year. i watched it on the website and really liked it, hope it can take off.
question: why didn’t ten premier it after the masterchef finale? it looked like it was just 2 episodes glued together last night with a clear separation point after 1 hour that could have easily been separated and aired the 1st half at 9:30. it could have got Undercover bosses 1.7mil or more. UB is a good show but in tens position would it really matter that much if an import factual flopped compared to an aussie drama?