The premiere of Network Ten’s crime drama Secrets & Lies drew 403,000 viewers in the five capital cities last night, beaten by the third episode of Nine’s Love Child.
Produced by Hoodlum Entertainment, Secrets & Lies stars Martin Henderson as a family man who becomes the prime suspect of a murder. He has no choice but to try to find the real killer as his marriage, his kids, his reputation, and his sanity are all at stake.
The show had a peak audience of 509,000 in the metros and a national average audience of 546,000. Ten will be hoping the premiere’s ratings are stronger when time-shifted and catch-up viewing figures are included and the 6-part series will build on word-of-mouth.
To be fair, it was not a strong night for Ten, with 596,000 viewers for Eyewitness News, 534,000 for The Project and 473,000 for Modern Family in the metros.
So it’s hard for a new Australian drama to establish itself in a low-viewing environment, particularly against Playmaker Media’s Love Child, which pulled 1.166 million viewers last night in the metros, 1.76 million nationally.
The pilot of the US remake of Secrets & Lies is shooting in Wilmington, North Carolina, starring Ryan Philippe and Juliette Lewis.
Screen Queensland issued a media release yesterday indicating it provided $637,615 in production and development funding to Secrets & Lies – an investment that returned $4,759,420 in Queensland production expenditure to the State.
The night’s top rating show was Seven’s My Kitchen Rules, which had an audience of 1.69 million/2.53 million, versus Nine’s The Block Fans vs Faves’ 1.2 million/1.78 million.
The live telecast of the Academy Awards on Nine drew 675,000 nationally, while a further 681,000 watched the delayed evening broadcast.