Digital TV Blog

Sexy cyborgs rule Digital Terrestrial

Bionic Woman, the NBC remake of the 1970’s series of the same name featuring former EastEnders star Michelle Ryan has seen a spike in ITV2 ratings, with the debut performance broadcast on the 11^th of March, raking in 2.2m viewers, breaking the record previously held by I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here Now! which drew about 2m in February 2004.

The story follows bartender Jamie Sommers, who is rescued from the brink of death after being implanted with a range of experimental cybernetic enhancements courtesy of a US government-affiliated company, for whom Sommers is obliged to do some dirty work for; the first episode saw Ryan engage in some high-wire fisticuffs with Katee Sackhoff from Sky’s Battlestar Galactica.

According to Ryan, the shoots for the first series of Bionic Woman were “hardcore” and involved a lot of Matrix-esque aerobatics; “they had me up in a harness one day and then I’m on another harness the next, doing these sort of crazy stunts.”

 

For UK audiences, the show represents a literal screen transformation; from Londoner Zoe Slater, to Jamie Sommers complete with a flawless American accent. The series went down well in the US, although possibility of a second series appears to have been scuppered due to complications arising from the Writer’s Strike.

Last month, Terminator spin-off The Sarah Connor Chronicles pushed the nascent Virgin 1 channel into prominence, pulling a combined total of 1,386,000 viewers on its launch night, proving that cyborgs rule the airwaves in the digital millennium.

Bionic Woman is broadcast on ITV2 every Tuesday at 9pm.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 9:48 am and is filed under Freeview, Sky Digital, Virgin Media. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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