The Royal Bodyguard Page 13

Under 3m for a 9pm Monday slot in January is very poor. Mondays are usually one of the most watched nights of the week and Mrs Brown is getting around 5m Under 3m for a 9pm Monday slot in January is very poor. Mondays are usually one of the most watched nights of the week and Mrs Brown is getting around 5m afterwards which should put TRB's performance into context.

It's also a bit misleading by comparing TRB's ratings in January to IWTF and My Family both which aired in the summer when viewing is much lower.

No offence Aaron but there is no way you can call the ratings healthy. It's gone from 8.3m to around 3m in a few episodes. That is very bad indeed. If the BBC feel that the ratings are "respectable" as you call them, then I would expect a recommission but they aren't and the BBC will bury the show and hope it gets forgotten. Even Sir David has admittied it was shit but of course put it more diplomatically.

Quote: dennispennis123 @ February 2 2012, 1:06 AM GMT

Under 3m for a 9pm Monday slot in January is very poor. Mondays are usually one of the most watched nights of the week and Mrs Brown is getting around 5m Under 3m for a 9pm Monday slot in January is very poor. Mondays are usually one of the most watched nights of the week and Mrs Brown is getting around 5m afterwards which should put TRB's performance into context.

It's also a bit misleading by comparing TRB's ratings in January to IWTF and My Family both which aired in the summer when viewing is much lower.

View original

Comparing any show to the inexplicable hit of Mrs. Brown's Boys is equally 'misleading', I'd argue! There's no denying that The Royal Bodyguard pales in comparison, but a truly poor rating for the show would be far closer to 1m, given that circa 5m MBB comparison. No one's claiming that TRB has done well, but it's not done nearly as badly as some portray.

It may be misleading to compare summer with winter (I don't believe there's that much difference in overall viewership as is sometimes claimed, as an aside, but that's a different discussion), but My Family had the traditional comedy scheduling working in its favour, and In With The Flynns a more suitable timeslot for its style. So, y'know, swings and roundabouts on each of the three.

Quote: dennispennis123 @ February 2 2012, 1:06 AM GMT

No offence Aaron but there is no way you can call the ratings healthy. It's gone from 8.3m to around 3m in a few episodes.

View original

You call my stats misleading, then go with that?! Not sure where the 8.3m figure comes from, but I assume it's the first episode? On Boxing Day. They could have broadcast a photograph of a plate of half rotten fish and chips for 30 minutes in that slot and it would have got a broadly similar audience figure. Let's be fair and look at episode 3 onwards, where it kept a steady audience of just under 3 million. Continue to keep in mind the amount of negative coverage the series got, and that's a healthy number.

Anyway, the above is irrelevant: no one's claiming the show was any kind of sleeper, underground smash hit, nor that it met the BBC's hopes; but the bottom line is that the circa 3 million figure and 11% share is within the realm of comparable recommissions, and I'm sure higher than some.

Quote: Aaron @ February 2 2012, 1:26 AM GMT

Anyway, the above is irrelevant: no one's claiming the show was any kind of sleeper, underground smash hit, nor that it met the BBC's hopes; but the bottom line is that the circa 3 million figure and 11% share is within the realm of comparable recommissions, and I'm sure higher than some.

View original

Maybe, but surely not the point? This was a mainstream Christmas-trumped show WITH DAVID JASON IN IT.

Sorry to shout, but if the BBC are anything but severely gutted by the ratings from "return of Del Boy" to their screens then they are nuts. And you, Mr Aaron Brown, are doing this website a disservice by suggesting, or even hinting, that it has been anything other than a terrible ratings flop. Them's the facts.

Of course I don't give a shit about ratings. All I'm interested in is whether it's any good. My verdict? I don't know. I haven't watched it.

Quote: Badge @ February 2 2012, 1:36 AM GMT

Maybe, but surely not the point? This was a mainstream Christmas-trumped show WITH DAVID JASON IN IT.

View original

Well the original argument, IIRC, was someone disagreeing with the notion that the figures were healthier than the reviews suggested they should be, and that the Beeb paying attention to the former would more likely lead to recommission... So it sort of is the point in the context of this discussion!

But yes, it's still a very fair point that it clearly didn't meet the hopes that the corporation had in it, including that it starred David Jason.

Again, just to be clear, we're not suggesting that the ratings were necessarily objectively impressive or not, but that within the whole context the show's audience figure didn't suffer nearly as much as might've been expected, so a recommission based on those figures is - whilst, yes, unlikely - not to be ruled out.

Quote: Aaron @ February 2 2012, 1:26 AM GMT

Comparing any show to the inexplicable hit of Mrs. Brown's Boys is equally 'misleading', I'd argue! There's no denying that The Royal Bodyguard pales in comparison, but a truly poor rating for the show would be far closer to 1m, given that circa 5m MBB comparison. No one's claiming that TRB has done well, but it's not done nearly as badly as some portray.

It may be misleading to compare summer with winter (I don't believe there's that much difference in overall viewership as is sometimes claimed, as an aside, but that's a different discussion), but My Family had the traditional comedy scheduling working in its favour, and In With The Flynns a more suitable timeslot for its style. So, y'know, swings and roundabouts on each of the three.

View original

No 9pm show has ever gone as low as 1m on BBC1. I think the record low is around 1.8/1.9m for weeknights and 1.5/1.6m for weekends.

TRB would probabaly have gone lower if MBB hadnt been following and had fans of that show tune in early and boost the end of TRB. The success of MBB on Mondays also sort of dispels your argument about TRB suffering because its on a Monday and sitcoms havent aired on that night for a while.

You call my stats misleading, then go with that?! Not sure where the 8.3m figure comes from, but I assume it's the first episode? On Boxing Day. They could have broadcast a photograph of a plate of half rotten fish and chips for 30 minutes in that slot and it would have got a broadly similar audience figure. Let's be fair and look at episode 3 onwards, where it kept a steady audience of just under 3 million. Continue to keep in mind the amount of negative coverage the series got, and that's a healthy number.

Anyway, the above is irrelevant: no one's claiming the show was any kind of sleeper, underground smash hit, nor that it met the BBC's hopes; but the bottom line is that the circa 3 million figure and 11% share is within the realm of comparable recommissions, and I'm sure higher than some.

8.35m is the official rating for the Boxing Day episode. I agree that many other shows would have got a high figure on Boxing Day but TRB had over 8m see the first episode, not many shows get the chance to appeal to so many viewers with their first episode. So if we look from episode 3 onwards it stabilised and kept a steady audience. However, under 3m is nowhere near good enough for that slot. And I think that is the crux of the argument, you think 2.8m for that slot is acceptable and I certainly dont.

If you can find any comparable recommisions then please post them but I don't think there any.

You can't expect me to follow the argument! It's a 13 page thread about a show I haven't seen!

Quote: Badge @ February 2 2012, 1:57 AM GMT

You can't expect me to follow the argument! It's a 13 page thread about a show I haven't seen!

View original

(Don't bother - I'm quite sure you won't like it!)

This show is quite awful in my view.

One thing that jumps out at me is David Jason is in his 70s. Hubble if he is a serving military officer at the beginning would be at most in his 50s.

So Jason is playing a character 20 years younger than his age.

Why didn't they just make Hubble a beefeater or a Chelsea Pensioner?

It's the kind of lazy detail. Like when he escaped the boot in a completely unamusing way.

That reflects a show that wasn't only not very funny in my view and completely unoriginal. But also feels unloved by all involved.

nb Aaron's right of course it got a spike on Boxing Day. Noel Edmonds shitting in the Deal or no Deal boxes would get a spike.

3 million is pretty good viewers, so it would appear the audience is part of the problem.

I genuinely think this wasn't as bad as everyone made out to be. It wasn't 10 out of 10 but it was a good watch. Still better than the recent comedies which nearly all rely on sex jokes as their main laughs.

Quote: Badge @ 2nd February 2012, 1:57 AM GMT

You can't expect me to follow the argument! It's a 13 page thread about a show I haven't seen!

View original

Are you sure you don't work for the commissioners? They hadn't seen the show either.

Quote: Paul Wimsett @ 13th November 2015, 3:08 PM GMT

Are you sure you don't work for the commissioners? They hadn't seen the show either.

View original

No one had. That's how commissioning works.