Springwatch presenter Chris Packham has told Top Gear hosts Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc to “keep your Dodge Viper”, as the rival BBC2 show returned with its biggest audience for a premiere in seven years.
Packham made the tongue-in-cheek comments in the opening moments of the nature programme offering viewers coverage of a stone-curlew, a rare avian visitor to southern England, on Monday night.
“If you were watching Top Gear last night, you’d know that started with a Dodge Viper,” he said, presenting from an RSPB site in Minsmere, Suffolk. “Pretty impressive, smart car, very fast. Well I’ve got to tell you Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc, I’m going to raise you a stone-curlew live on our acid grassland. You can keep your Dodge Viper. Look at the eye of that bird! It’s squinting now, It’s having a little nap.”
Despite Packham’s quip – Top Gear typically attracts almost double the audience of Springwatch – the presenter did have something to crow about.
The nature programme pulled in an average audience of 2.6 million in its slot, the highest-rated premiere of Springwatch since 2009.
The long-awaited return of the new-look Top Gear was watched by an average of 4.4 million viewers, the lowest for a series opener in years.
The show, which received mixed to mostly negative reviews, was more than 2 million down on the average of the last series starring Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond.
A repeat of the series opener was screened on Monday night and attracted 900,000 viewers, down on the average 1.1 million that the old Top Gear typically pulled in.
The launch ratings are the best for Packham, who has admitted in his new memoir that he ate tadpoles as a child, since he joined the BBC2 show in 2009 in a new-look line up without Bill Oddie.
The Island (not that one) proves a hit as dating survival show returns
In other ratings news, it was a barnstormer for the return of island survival show – no, not the Channel 4 Bear Gryll’s show – Love Island on ITV.
Love Island drew an average audience of 825,000, and an impressive peak of 1.032m, as the premiere of the sexually-charged ITV2 reality show outstripped the ratings of every episode of last year’s series.
The highest audience for the first series of the show was the final, which drew an average audience of 737,000.
BBC2 Springwatch launch episode average ratings
2016: 2.62m
2015: 2.12m
2014: 2.2m
2013: 2.33m
2012: 2.4m
2011: 2.49m
2010: 2.52m
2009: 3.9m
