HDTV Ratings: V, Underbelly: The Golden Mile

V didn’t stand for victory last night when TV2 relaunched the sci-fi re-make, V, with the first of four HD double-episodes.

It opened with 8.7% of the channel’s target market, 18-39 year-olds, down from the 13.5% Cougar Town delivered, dipped as low as 7% and averaged 7.4% over the two hours — light years away from the stellar performance of the first four episodes that screened in the same slot in late ’09.

The penultimate episode of TV3’s HD crime drama, Underbelly: The Golden Mile, drew 11.3% of 18-39 year-olds during V’s first hour (and 12.4% of TV3’s key demo, 18-49 year-olds).

Astonishingly, V’s 18-39 viewership wasn’t much better than the 6.1% that watched the previous night’s 10.30pm re-run of an episode that screened last year.

Perhaps such a result should have been expected given V’s second batch of episodes struggled in the US until, as Entertainment Weekly reported, “the troubled reboot … rebounded creatively and ratings-wise” enough near the end of its first season to win a 13-episode renewal.

Meanwhile, the first season of V lands on Blu-ray in the US on August 24 and in this part of the world two months later.