[This post is quite poorly timed on my part really, so if you came here looking for Deal or No Deal on Tour or Time Commanders, scroll down a bit or click on the links.]
As is tradition I always put a bet on Christmas Day’s top TV show and make lots of money and normally let people on Twitter know. This year I thought I’d show you my methodology. You gamble at your own risk.
A couple of pointers before we begin, first I much prefer to bet for value over backing the favourite (which has only come in once in the last few years) and secondly the Betfair market, which is where I put my money, pays out on overnights only. Odds given are odds you can get at the time of writing.
Here’s last year’s overnight Christmas Day Top 10, courtesy of this page here:
1) The Queen (BBC One/ITV) ………………………………………..7.2m (6.1m on BBC One and 1.1m on ITV)
2) Downton Abbey – The Finale (ITV) ………………………………6.6m
3) Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special (BBC One)………. 6.5m
4) Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special (BBC One)………………6.4m
5) Stick Man (BBC One) ………………………………………………..6.4m
6) Call The Midwife (BBC One)……………………………………….. 5.8m
7) Doctor Who (BBC One) ……………………………………………..5.8m
8) EastEnders (BBC One) ………………………………………………5.7m
9) Coronation Street (ITV)……………………………………………. 5.6m
10) Brave (BBC One) ……………………………………………………..5.5m
Very interesting. And because of that I can now tell you that I’ve got three figures on The Queen on BBC1 being this year’s Xmas Number One – the combined total will not count here but you can see the split for yourselves. Normally The Queen is right up there (in fact it’s remarkably consistent, looking back it tends to get above six million whilst the trend is for everything in primetime to drop) but with this year being so incredibly weird in terms of news my gut is telling me that as something that hasn’t changed this year she’s going to rate massively. Half a million to make up in a year with Brexit and Trump? At those odds? I can’t turn it down, Christmas primetime really isn’t the monster it used to be. Odds: 14
However there are no guarantees, all I can do is read a situation and project. Therefore if you think I’m wrong here are the other major runners and riders:
- Strictly Come Dancing Xmas: – this ought to do well and is current favourite but I’m not really feeling it, it’ll have a low lead-in from Doctor Who and I fear Paul o Grady’s For The Love of Dogs is very reliable factual and might nab a few viewers off of it. It IS Len Goodman’s last episode but I don’t anticipate that being too much of an extra draw, people will mentally say their goodbyes with the main final this weekend. However if Brucie carks it before Xmas than all bets are off. As it stands this is not a price I would consider exciting and it certainly isn’t free money. Odds: 2.78
- Mrs Brown’s Boys: when I tipped MBB to a sensational 15-1 victory a few years ago there were a lot of signs people missed – that it was the biggest show on Boxing Day the year previous, that repeats would pull in 5-6 million. This year it ought to do well, and the live show did well, but the world has changed a little – repeats now pull 3-4 mill and people will probably watch on catch-up, I don’t think it’s quite the draw it once was and being on at 10:30pm is going to significantly hurt its chances. Odds: 2.74
- Call the Midwife: Too long (90 minutes) and requires previous investment to really get the most from it. Odds: 4.3
- The Great Christmas Bake Off: literally throwing your money away. After spending all day cooking your Christmas dinner, who now is going to want to watch an hour of baking, and before 5pm to boot? This should have been on Christmas Eve. It’s not even the last episode – that’s on Boxing Day at 7pm (a proper time slot). It might be the last time the gang are together, but everyone’s already said their goodbyes really, and Bake Off Specials only tend to do half as well as Proper Full On Bake-Off. Odds: 4.3
- Eastenders: It barely gets five million nightly now, it doesn’t usually get much of a Christmas bump (although it is on very late at 9:30 this year). Odds: 5.5
- Frozen: This is a real danger, everybody loves Frozen and animated stuff does well on the day and this will be its terrestrial premiere. It’s on after The Queen. But has everybody watched it already and does it still have the draw? If I was to put a covering bet on, it’d be on this. Odds: 5.7
- Coronation Street: Basically soaps are no longer as dominant as they once were. Odds: 15
- Maigret’s Dead Man: This is the day’s mystery for me, Rowan Atkinson playing the French detective. It could go quite large, although it does start an hour into Call the Midwife which won’t help it. Odds: 15
- Doctor Who: don’t waste your money, it will do very averagely on the night and make it up on catch up. Odds: 16
- Emmerdale: is a thing that’s on. Odds: 25
No word on what timeslot yet, but !mpossible starts on Monday 1/2….
Almost certainly the same one Think Tank’s in.
Off-topic, and the video’s already on UKGS, but here’s Pass the Buck from 1998:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkqMWtkZt2A
Am I the only one who thinks of Going for Gold every time I watch this?
Of course, PTB’s format was totally different to GFG’s, and also it was produced by Zenith rather than Grundy. But it still had a fair few similarities with the ‘Gold: it was made in Manchester, it aired in a lunchtime slot on BBC1, it had a system of daily and weekly winners – and even the graphics in its final round bore some resemblance to those in GFG’s Head to Head.
Safe to say, though, that Fred was no Henry Kelly. 😉
more news from Avanti Un Altro!
There’s going to be a new on-screen judge replacing Marco Salvati, who will still be on the show as a writer.
In addition, Marco Salvati posted this picture… https://www.instagram.com/p/BN8wlQPj1Uv/
Ooh, is everyone getting scored?
I thought I read that the overnights were published at 0930, not sure if it’s different on holidays, so good luck right about now, Brig.
Looks like Strictly won with 7.2m, actually significantly UP from last year which I didn’t predict.
Ah well.
Well, nuts.
It’s not the end of the world, but it’d have been bloody nice.
Looks like The Queen combined got 7.7m, which suggests she did indeed increase enough on BBC1 to win against last year’s numbers. Ah well!
Really interesting stat – 5.1m on BBC1, 3m on ITV! Massive difference from last year, Harry Potter/Lion King sandwich doing the business evidently.
I took a very wild punt on Corrie (in the officials) based on it being 40/1 and the BBC schedule getting weaker by the year by being exactly the same. Strictly winning the overnights is no surprise – can’t see anything other than Bake Off overtaking it in the officials really. The overnights of tonights episode might be an indicator of how well the Christmas Day episode time shifts.
Glad the Lion King did relatively well, though would have liked to have seen it beat Frozen. Ridiculous it hadn’t been on TV in 22 years before it’s C4 premiere earlier this year and is now on ITV and ITV2 three times in a week.