Special Reports: Soaps Enjoy Bumper Week

The snow, ice and bitter cold may have bought certain parts of the country to a standstill and halted production on Emmerdale, Hollyoaks and Coronation Street but in terms of ratings it couldn’t have been better for them. We take a look back at the week and reveal how each soap performed on each day but we’re not just covering the big four. Nope we’ll be looking at Doctors, Neighbours as well as Holby City and The Bill.

Updated to include Casualty ratings from Saturday evening.

The soaps got off to a bumper start with the four major soaps all enjoying strong ratings. However, we’ll start with the daytime soaps; Neighbours and Doctors. The BBC medical drama returned for its first episode of 2010 with a strong 1.8 million on Monday. The soap had been off-air during the festive period as had Australian soap Neighbours. Both soaps, Home And Away included which didn’t return this week, usually take a break over the festive period to clear way in the schedules for other programmes. Neighbours first episode of 2010 in the UK had 1.4 million viewers. 

Channel Four soap Hollyoaks was suffering last week from a ratings lull when figures dropped below the million mark but on Monday it bounced back with 1.8 million viewers. Emmerdale broke the 8 million mark for the first time in nearly a year with 8.3 million viewers while Coronation Street enjoyed 10.8 million and 11 million viewers for its double bill of episodes. Finally EastEnders wasn’t far behind its Christmas Day rating with 10.7 million while a further 700,000 watched the 10pm repeat on BBC Three – pushing the episode well over 11 million viewers in terms of combined audience. 

Tuesday 

Once again starting with the daytime soaps and Doctors on BBC One saw ratings rise slightly with 2 million viewers watching while on Five Neighbours held steady with 1.4 million viewers. Hollyoaks though actually lost viewers with 1.5 million tuning in – a drop of nearly 300,000 viewers. Emmerdale also lost ground slightly with 8 million viewers tuning in – a slight drop from Monday’s strong figure. 

EastEnders broke the 11 million mark for an episode which was teen-centric and introduced several characters ahead of its new online spin-off E20. Later at 10pm the BBC Three repeat was seen by 1 million viewers giving the episode a combined audience of 12 million viewers. At 8pm on BBC One medical drama Holby City performed strongly with 6.7 million viewers – the shows best performance in some time. 

Wednesday:

On Wednesday afternoon Doctors leapt ahead with a rise of 700,000 viewers as 2.7 million tuned in for the latest episode of the daytime medical drama. Neighbours also saw a slight rise as 1.6 million tuned in to Five. Hollyoaks however once again saw a slight drop in viewers with 1.4 million seeing the Channel Four soap. Prime-time wise and Emmerdale as the only major soap of the day enjoyed a strong evening with 8.4 million viewers. 

Thursday: 

After its high of Wednesday Doctors couldn’t quite maintain such strong figures but 2.4 million viewers still tuned in for the BBC soap. Over on Five and Aussie soap Neighbours had 1.4 million viewers and for Hollyoaks its ratings decline continued with 1.3 million watching the latest instalment of the teen soap. 

Once again the three major soaps enjoyed stronger ratings than normal as Emmerdale broke the 9 million mark for the first time in nearly three years. The first episode of the Yorkshire soap was seen by 8.3 million while the second was seen by 9 million but peaked at 9.5 million viewers. Coronation Street held 10.6 million viewers at 8.30. At 9pm cop-drama The Bill saw a ratings rise as 4.2 million viewers tuned in – a good performance for the series which has struggled in the ratings since moving to 9pm. BBC One soap EastEnders had 10.6 million viewers for the arrival of Glenda Mitchell [Glynis Barber] to Walford and the BBC Three showing had over 800, 000 viewers giving a combined audience once more of over 11 million viewers. 

Friday:

Doctors ended its first week on-air of 2010 with 2.1 million viewers almost the same figure it launched with on Monday. The Birmingham produced soap enjoyed a healthy week thanks to the adverse weather conditions with many forced to watch daytime TV as schools and businesses closed. Australian soap Neighbours ended the week with 1.3 million viewers while Hollyoaks ended a week of declining ratings with 1.3 million viewers. Bosses at the Channel Four may be left wondering while all the other soaps enjoyed climbing ratings but their’s declined across the week. 

Emmerdale’s final episode of the week was seen by 8.2 million viewers. Coronation Street broke the 11 million mark for the second time in a week. 10.8 million and 11 million tuned in respectively for the double bill of episodes. EastEnders on BBC One had 10.8 million to end the week and over 600,000 for the BBC Three repeat. As with other episodes of the soap across the week the combined figure pushes the soap over the 11 million mark.

Saturday evening

The longest running medical drama in the world had suffered in the latter part of 2009 due to tough competition from The X-Factor when its ratings had fallen below four million. However, it now looks like Casualty is back on form because on Saturday evening it was seen by 6.4 million viewers. Interesting to note though that its spin-off series, Holby City, rated better than the parent show as on Tuesday it had 6.7 million.