Did recent twist help or hurt Call the Midwife’s season 7 finale ratings?
Overall, the BBC drama series brought in (per Telly Mix) a strong 7.1 million viewers for its last episode, one that marked the funeral for Charlotte Ritchie’s character of Barbara. This was down around 600,000 viewers from the week before, which is somewhat surprising given that we would’ve pegged Barbara’s death as the sort of event that would have convinced even more viewers to check out the show. You could say that there were some viewers who were angry over the twist and chose not to keep watching because of it, but for the time being it feels like too small a sample size and with that, it’s wrong to make any sort of rash judgment. This will be a little easier to figure out when Call the Midwife returns in the new year with its eighth season.
We do think, though, that there could be a problem that comes out of the series dropping one of their most-popular characters within this fashion. While there is a great deal of sadness on the series, there is also hope that shines through almost every corner. It’s hard to find hope in losing Barbara, someone still newly married and with her whole life ahead of her.
As for some other ratings news on the night…
The other series we want to point out here is Endeavour, which closed off its own season with around 4.3 million viewers. This performance was largely even with the episode the week prior, but ITV is almost certainly happy with it overall. After all, they have already formally renewed the series for another season — even if they are losing some cast members in the process.
(Side note: We wish Endeavour was more popular in America. It does air on PBS, but in the process of that it’s not exactly getting a ton of promotion.)
What do you think about some of these ratings, and are you surprised that Barbara’s death didn’t lead to a ratings jump? Share in the comments!
Meanwhile, be sure to like CarterMatt on Facebook in the event you want some more insight on the BBC series. (Photo: BBC.)