Comedian Peter Kay’s new sitcom Car Share looks like being a real belter for the BBC, scooping 5.7 million viewers on BBC1 on Wednesday night as well as breaking iPlayer records.
Despite already racking up 1m requests for the first episode on iPlayer, the show still pulled in a huge 27% audience share when the first episode aired on BBC1.
And it drew 64% more viewers than watched what was in the 9.30pm-10pm slot last week – the final episode of the exploration series Secret Britain.
Overall 2.8mrequests for the six-part series of Car Share have been made since it was premiered on iPlayer at the weekend as a box-set, a new record.
Car Share stars Kay and Sian Gibson as fellow employees John and Keyleigh thrown into a car share together after the supermarket they work for sets up a scheme to save parking spaces. It confounded some people’s expectations that premiering it on iPlayer as part of a trial Netflix-style system would cannibalise its television audience to a large degree.
The BBC1 airing trounced rivals on the other channels such as Channel 4’s The Island with Bear Grylls, which scored 2.4 million viewers and ITV maternity ward comedy The Delivery Man, which averaged 1.2 million.
Car Share, written by Tim Reid and Paul Coleman and directed by Kay, is the first time Kay has worked for the BBC. He was one of the first major signings when the BBC’s current controller of comedy Shane Allen moved over from Channel 4 three years ago.
The second episode of Car Share is due to air on Thursday night, with the remaining four due to play out at 9.30pm on Wednesday nights.
If it continues in the same vein it is likely the BBC will be keen to commission a second series. As BBC director of England Peter Salmon pointed out recently while talking about the forthcoming Salford Sitcom Showcase, finding a hit sitcom is like “panning for gold”.
