Love/Hate – Fans still loving it?
As we approach the penultimate episode of Love/Hate this Sunday, many viewers will be left wondering what can replace the void that will be left at 9.30pm on a Sunday evening once the fourth series draws to a close on 10th November. There is no doubting that Stuart Carolan’s gritty crime drama has captured the nation’s attention since it launched back in 2010, and this season hasn't disappointed, with it being as topical as ever. Many people questioned if it would be able to live up to the dizzying heights that it reached in Season 3, or would Season 4 see it “jumping the shark”. By cleverly showing us the detectives’ perspective in trying to bring Nidge and his gang down, and keeping viewers gripped to the edge of their seats each episode, the Irish public are as enthralled as ever with RTÉ’s hit drama series.
Whilst it’s no surprise to hear that Love/Hate performs well for the younger and male audiences, over the last two episodes the audience with the strongest viewership is Housekeepers with kids pulling in 33 TVRs for episode 3 and 21 TVRs in episode 4. This proves the popularity of the show across all audiences, not just the younger cohort. But how has it rated compared to Season 3, which many people consider to have been the stand out season to date? The first four episodes in Season 3 averaged 15 TVRs for Adults 15+, taking in an average of 491,000 viewers per episode. Comparatively, the first four episodes of Season 4 have averaged 19 TVRs for Adults 15+, with an average of 644,000 people tuning in each week. Last Sunday’s episode did see a drop off in Live viewers due to the Bank Holiday, though many viewing will be catching up during the week.
The show has also dominated on Social Media over the last month; none more so than Twitter. TV is the dominant medium in driving trends on Twitter but over the last month this has gone into over – drive on Sunday evenings with the show and cast’s Twitter pages being inundated by fans tweets. New characters from the show have also been set up on Twitter with fake accounts within minutes of the episode airing, whether it’s the Love/Hate cat, which met a gruesome end in episode 1 of the current series, or Darren’s hoodie from Season 3. Portlaoise Prison ran out of stock of ‘fizzy orange’ the day after Tommy made reference to it when being arrested – a marketer’s dream.
This further proves the ever increasing popularity in what has been classed by many as RTÉ’s best home produced programme in years.
One thing is for certain though - we already can’t wait for Season 5.