HDTV Ratings: Outrageous Fortune, Nurse Jackie, Grey’s Anatomy

The first HD episode of Outrageous Fortune helped TV3 to win the Tuesday night ratings race for the first time in months.

The final season premiere rated a staggering 23.7% with the network’s target audience, 18-49 year-olds, and even higher with 18-39 (24.5%), 25-54 (24.8%) and household shoppers with kids (27.8%).

It was the kind of result that makes the decision to replace Outrageous Fortune with a new HD comedy/drama from the same team, The Almighty Johnsons, even more mystifying.

Outrageous Fortune’s champagne-popping popularity delivered the season premiere of another no-holds-barred HD drama, Nurse Jackie, a bumper 17% of 18-49 viewers but, undeservedly, this more than halved to 7.4% by the end of the hour.

Amazingly, TV2’s HD opposition, Grey’s Anatomy, while dented by Outrageous Fortune’s debut, largely held its own, down from 12.4% of 18-49 the previous week to only 11.3%.

Meanwhile, critics heralded the return of the Wests with as much gusto as viewers: The NZ Herald called the premiere “hilarious, gripping” and The Dominion Post, “as good as ever, just as funny, probably even raunchier than before, and the acting remains astonishingly good”.