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Normal People has delivered the best week for BBC Three as the youth drama proves to be a hit with people trapped at home during the running of the bulls.
The television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s award-winning novel has been requested 16.2 million times on BBC iPlayer since the series launched on April 26. A quarter of those who have logged in to watch it have already watched all 12 episodes.
“A significant proportion of people watched all episodes in the first 24 hours,” Fiona Campbell, the BBC Three controller, said in a virtual interview for the Edinburgh Television Festival. “The people who did that were all very young. People love binge eating. “
Normal People has broken the previous record for the opening week of BBC Three that was held in the first series of Killing Eve, which drew 8 million requests at its launch in 2018.
Campbell said viewers had been lucky as the show had just completed before the spread of the coronavirus halted TV and movie production across the UK.
“The directors managed to get everything through post-production before the closing came,” he said. “For us, the Normal People numbers show how well our content resonates. It is relevant to what people are going through right now. “
The popularity of the show fueled the best week for BBC Three since the channel moved. online only four years ago, he doubled the numbers of his previous record. The program accounted for more than 70% of total requests for 21.8 million for all BBC Three programs in the first week since its launch.
Normal People has proven to be a great success, attracting those beyond BBC Three’s target demographic of 16 to 34 years, who accounted for 5 million of the total 16.2 million requests to watch the show.
Campbell said he believes the show would have been a mandatory television show even if people weren’t trapped at home looking for shows to watch.
“This probably would have happened independently,” he said. “The book had a huge fan base and fits in well with BBC Three’s DNA. When any drama becomes mega it becomes a phenomenon, everyone wants some action. People will want to watch the show even if they are over 40 years old. When you get hit, you will attract more people. “
Campbell said the BBC Three budget “would not be immune” to the cuts the corporation is trying to make, and that the channel needed to keep its game up against competition for the youth market from a variety of rivals.
“Disney + has just launched and we are competing with other platforms like YouTube,” he said. “Our shows fill a [important] gap in the BBC iPlayer. “
In March, it emerged that the corporation had had talks about whether BBC Three should have a presence on traditional television again. BBC Three was taken off the air in March 2016.
