...but John Cleese comedy is still pulling in 5 million

John Cleese comedy Hold The Sunset shed a fifth of its audience in its first week.

But it still attracted a sizeable five million viewers to BBC One at 7.30pm last night – almost a quarter of the entire viewing audience at the time.

Although the opening episode attracted a massive 6.2million viewers, the sitcom, which also stars Alison Steadman, Jason Watkins, Peter Egan and Rosie Cavaliero, has divided viewers.

A poll of RadioTimes.com readers found that  38 per cent of the audience ‘really enjoyed it’ compared to 68 per cent who ‘didn’t enjoy it at all’.

And it has split critics. too, from the DailyTelegraph gushing about the ‘wonderful programme’ to The Arts Desk slating ‘a weary exhumation of sitcom’s more incontinent old tropes’.

The show, written by Charles McKeown,  appears aimed at an older demographic – given the average BBC One viewer is 61 years old. But one viewer wrote beneath our review: ‘I am 65 years old and can in no way relate to it. To me it was like watching the very worst sitcoms when I was a teenager in the 1960s. DREADFUL!’

Published: 26 Feb 2018