I hope, dear reader, you have had (are having) are finer Christmas than your drummer. I've spent 48 hours in bed as a result of some kind of ghastly vomiting bug and am only just feeling better today. Reading about DK's Xmas breakfasts and copious dinner only makes me feel even more annoyed.
Consequently I haven't seen Doctor Who yet, but I gather it was viewed by 12.2million. That's the highest individual rating since 1979 (City of Death part 4 I think) and it's still only the overnights. We can expect the final figure (ie once the likes of me have watched it) to top 13 million. For someone who remembers 1989's parade of 3 and 4 million figures, this is just bliss.
Actually, apropos my illness, I wonder if I haven't been reading too much Susan Howatch and have come down with a terrible spiritual crisis for which I have been leaving hints and guesses for any budding spiritual director to ride to my assistance with...maybe not. Red cabbage it was, then.
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4 comments:
Dr Who gained a lot of viewers from people turning in early to see the Eastenders episode after, but it was still a healthy figure.
I'm interested to know what you think of the thing (once you get around to seeing it).
I'm currently enjoying the audio version of 'The Web of Fear', which I got as a Christmas present to myself. :-)
I've seen it now and my considered, intellectual opinion is that it was ace. Last year's was a bit rubbish but I thought this was excellent: simple, fun, all good Christmas stuff. It was 10 minutes too long and there was too much emotional guff and bullshit at the end but otherwise it was top.
Matt - re the scheduling. That's not a bad thing. I knew we were in for a good figure when I saw the schedules. You are too young to remember 1989 and the fact that no-one could be arsed to watch Who when it followed Wogan and was opposite Corrie. A bit of intelligent scheduling is well overdue.
Owing to my illness i've od'd on audios! I have a 4hr box of Geoffrey Beevers (bliss) reading The Doomsday Weapon which I got for Xmas. I could listen to it over and over again - it is just great. I don't have web of fear but I do have War Machines still to listen to!
I wasn't complaining about the ratings - just pointing out that Eastenders gave us a hand.
And I can (just about) remember the tail-end of the McCoy years - though obviously I was a little too young to care much about ratings. I've read Andrew Cartmel's account of his time as script editor though, and I know what a rough time the series went through.
So don't worry: the knowledge that around 12 millions people watch the Xmas special really puts a smile on my face. As I said on another post, this is a golden age for Who fans.
As for the audios - I'm tempted by the 'Doomsday Weapon', but I'm trying to gather all the Patrick Troughton stories I can at the moment. Hopefully my spending spree on the audios will push them into doing some more animated versions, as they did with 'The Invasion'. Although the Yetis wouldn't have the same presence as they do on film, an animated version of 'The Abominable Snowmen' and the missing parts of 'The Web of Fear' would make my year.
Dear Matt,
Please don't think I was criticising you: certainly not! And of course I knew you'd be delighted at the ratings! My point was simply that attributing a good rating to a good bit of scheduling is _not a bad thing_ especially after the crappy scheduling of the 80s.
-pipe and slippers- When I were a lad, in the 80s, I used to pour over DWM for the most recent ratings. In 1988 this was bliss, as I saw first 5.8m (Remembrance pt3 I think); then 6.1m (SN pt1); and finally, o joy of joys, 6.6m (Greatest Show pt2 I think). 1988 was a great new dawn, it was heaven to be young or something. And then watching season 26 and thinking "fuck me this is really excellent family tv, the ratings must be like((except we didn't say "like" in them days") 6,7,8m" and finding, crushingly, that Battlefield pt1 was 3.1m and that its highest figure was 3.9m (I think) and that only Survival pts1 and 3 hit 5.0m. I really, and truly, never thought the programme that gave me interest in language, in stories, in religion, in physics, in life: would ever be back, let alone hit 12.2m when I was 30 something in a world of 42000 channels of which 41996 are pornography. -/pipe and slippers-
OK that might sound stupid but that is how it is.
12.2m!!!! fuck me! 12.2m!!!!
Robots of Death, Deadly Assassin, Talons of Weng-Chiang, your boys took one hell of a beating!!!
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