Originals Deliver for UKTV

According to a year-end review, UKTV originals topped 2018 ratings on six channels in the bouquet—Dave, W, Gold, Drama, Yesterday and Really—and on UKTV Play.

On Dave, four out of the top five shows were UKTV originals: Taskmaster, Jon Richardson: Ultimate Worrier, Judge Romesh and Zapped. Taskmaster was also the most popular show across the network with season seven becoming the most successful to date, with an average of 1.5 million viewers per episode.

For W, Emma Willis: Delivering Babies was the most-watched show on the channel in 2018. Abandoned Engineering, meanwhile, was the most popular on Yesterday.

Richard Watsham, UKTV’s director of commissioning, said: “UKTV is increasing investment into originations yet again and in partnership with top talent, both in front of and behind the camera, it’s enabling us to strengthen our catalog of popular and critically acclaimed shows.

“This year our aim is to grow original output even further with a series of network firsts. Flack, our first full-blown drama series, premieres on W in February. We’ll shortly be in production for a number of crime dramas for Alibi, and Steve Backshall will bring high-octane specialist factual to Dave with the stunning Expedition.

“We want to build on our strong talent relationships too, Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over kicks off a revitalized slate for W, which still has slots to fill, and on Dave we’re looking for female-fronted comedy entertainment shows to complement other high performing hits, led by Taskmaster.”

In 2018, UKTV Play had 140 million views across all platforms, a 36 percent increase on the previous year. In less than 12 months since mandatory registration was introduced, over 1.8 million users have signed up to the service, a third of whom are 16 to 34. UKTV originals were the most popular shows on UKTV Play, with episodes of Taskmaster, Judge Romesh and Jon Richardson: Ultimate Worrier in the top three spots.