Chris Morris comedy flops

Chris Morris’s new media satire Nathan Barley is proving a ratings flop – attracting just three per cent of the audience on Friday night.

Just 700,000 tuned in to the third episode at 10pm, contributing to the second worst Friday night Channel 4 has suffered in a decade.

Even the Simpsons, which the channel brought at great expense, couldn’t shore up the ratings, attracting around 2 million viewers at 9pm.

But most of those switched off once Nathan Barley came on.  Just over half of the 1.2 million viewers who watched the first episode have stuck with it.

The Friday Night Project, fronted by Jimmy Carr and guest host Jordan, fared better at 10.30pm  with 1.6 million viewers, a respectable 11 per cent share.

The channel’s average over the night was just five per cent of the audience, according to unofficial overnight figures.

On Five, Friends spin-off Joey has also been suffering. It attracted 2.1 million viewers (or eight per cent of the audience), almost half of the 4.1 million who saw the first episode three weeks ago.

On Saturday night, the star-studded tsunami fund-raiser Comic Aid attracted an average 6.1million viewers to BBC1, peaking at 6.8million towards the end and clearly trouncing ITV1 in the ratings.

Published: 16 Jan 2005