HD Ratings: Luminaries Outshines Rivals

Soft movie competition helped The Luminaries to end its run on a top-rating high top the ratings with its penultimate episode.

The Eleanor Catton dramatisation, which premieres this weekend on BBC2, rebounded on Sunday to average 4.6% of TVNZ 1’s target audience, 25-54 year-olds.

It also won the 8.30 hour in the other core commercial demographics as well as 5+.

The series final benefitted from TVNZ 2 and Three screening underwhelming alternatives: the former re-ran for the umpteenth time National Treasure: Book of Secrets and the latter the free-to-air premiere of First Man, a fine film but scarcely a crowdpleaser (it averaged 1.1% of Three’s 25-54 audience and didn’t even crack 1.0% in the other key demos).

TVNZ 1 also dominated with 1 News, Hyundai Country Calendar and Sunday rating extraordinarily highly to win their slots in all the major demos except 18-39.

In the 7.00 tussle between TVNZ 2’s My Kitchen Rules: The Rivals and Three’s Lego Masters Australia, the only key demo the latter didn’t win was household shoppers with kids — and then only one-tenth of a rating point separated the two.

The return of live Super Rugby helped Sky Sport 1 to win the 25-54 and 18-49 demos on Saturday.

Post-rugby, Three’s movie Going in Style was tops in these demos while 18-39s opted for TVNZ 2’s double-bill of Bicentennial Man and The Happytime Murders.

TVNZ 1’s Jamie Keeping Cooking and Carry On, Britain’s Got Talent and The Hotel Inspector led in the 5+ and HHS/k demo.

Here are Sunday’s most-watched primetime programmes on the free-to-air HD channels (excluding +1 and in order of their 5+ rating and audience share):