[UTVLifer]

Would the BBC have had a say in the time of year? Or have Disney dictated that?

Because this doesn't exactly feel like the strongest time of year for Saturday Night viewing...

Russell said this a little while ago in his DWM column (from Issue 600) that

"In an ideal world, we might have followed The Church on Ruby Road with a full series of Ncuti and Millie in January, and believe me, we tried. Way back in 2022, we jugged scheduled and budgets and capacity, but... nope. We'd have ended up spending money on the rush rather on the programme itself. It's the FX..."

So really, I think it may have come down to them not being ready for a January launch, and then having to wait until May for the next ideal launch time to come up for both the BBC and Disney+

[Brekkie]

It feels a mistake after such a strong Q1 to then have a month long gap between the end of Gladiators and Big Show/The Wheel to launching this. They wasted any momentum they had built up from a linear perspective at least.

[JAS84]

The Wheel hasn't ended... that was actually on straight after Who last weekend. Only reason it wasn't on the previous week was Eurovision.

[Andrew]

The Wheel hasn't ended... that was actually on straight after Who last weekend. Only reason it wasn't on the previous week was Eurovision.

These episodes of The Wheel are repeats though

[JMT1985]

I feel a consolidated figure of around 3.5 to 4 million is excellent for the show - 2024 is a very different era in television - even big ITV dramas such as Trigger Point, Breathtaking and even Mr Bates vs the Post Office was around this mark.

This is the world we live in now - as people tend to watch it very later after release. I bet the 28 day consolidated figures will be more interesting to read.