• First final on My Kitchen Rules secures Thursday win for Seven
• The Handmaid’s Tale lifts SBS share with two-hour launch special
• A Current Affair award-winner Laura Turner chases a celebrity chef
Seven
Just the one episode of Home And Away last night with the reality king having another Thursday outing. The soap set at Summer Bay ended its week on 680,000.
The six remaining teams on My Kitchen Rules entered Kitchen HQ for the first time this season. Josh and Nic cooked the best and for their efforts won a place in the semifinals. The Seven reality show has been enjoying life without MAFS as The Voice doesn’t have the same cut-through against it. MKR was without both last night and delivered an audience of 1.07m.
First Dates UK then did 137,000 in Sydney and Brisbane.
AFL markets got an episode of The Front Bar with Mick, Sam and Andy recording a three-market audience of 265,000, 170,000 of them in Melbourne, a bigger crowd again than Nine’s Footy Show in that market.
Nine
A Current Affair started with an amazing report from Laura Turner that contained allegations that celebrity chef Shannon Bennett had been having trouble paying his bills. Turner tried to confront Bennett during a morning jog and she ended up chasing him down the street trying to get a comment from him. He featured on ACA the same day that TEN confirmed his role on the new season of MasterChef that is just over a week away. ACA Thursday did 762,000.
Nine’s Thursday Night Football featured South Sydney v Brisbane with 468,000 watching (Sydney was on 237,000 and Brisbane did 193,000).
After 8.30pm in Melbourne, Nine screened the AFL Footy Show to 152,000. In Sydney The Footy Show screened after the NRL with 88,000.
TEN
On The Project the series Women to Watch continued and the Thursday comedian was Nath Valvo for the audience of 435,000.
You knew it was going to be one of the better episodes of Show Me The Movie! with a guest list that boasted Jess Harris and Amanda Keller. The episode did 353,000, however, after 423,000 a week ago.
Law & Order: SVU followed with 291,000 and then the new Ambulance got an encore screening after its debut last Saturday, with 201,000 watching the repeat.
ABC
Drama night on the channel, although none of it Australian first-run.
Kiri with the great Sarah Lancashire did 387,000 followed by episode three of Wentworth on 155,000.
Old QI episodes are getting a late slot here with Stephen Fry’s final season starting last night with 105,000.
SBS
The channel’s share of 7.0% was its best Thursday this year and its best on any night in close to three weeks.
Great British Railway Journeys started in Wokingham as Michael Portillo filled another three successive nights at 7.30pm on the channel. His audience last night was 299,000.
Episode seven of Luke Nguyen’s Food Trail did 200,000 at 8pm.
The much-anticipated second season of The Handmaid’s Tale followed with a double episode throwing viewers back into a horrid world. The two episodes had an average of 270,000 viewers. The biggest crowd was 118,000 in Melbourne, which was double the number viewing in Sydney.
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