Big ratings for Rapid Blue’s ‘Come Dine With Me South Africa’

The SAFTA winning local format, Come Dine With Me South Africa, produced by Rapid Blue, returned to BBC BRIT for a fourth series. Brilliant casting yielded some stand out contestants which combined with many incredibly funny hosting faux pas, the final three episodes of the new series become the highest-ever rated episodes across the BBC Studios’ branded channels portfolio in South Africa (excluding the livestream of the recent Royal wedding of the Duke and Duchess in Sussex).The premieres of episodes 10, 11 and 12 on a Thursday evening pulled in an average of over 200,000 viewers with the finale on Thursday 3^rd May successfully attracting an audience of nearly 250,000 – making BBC BRIT (DStv channel 120) the number one channel on DSTVi during broadcast and the number six international channel on DSTV. Prior to the airing of series four, the top rating episodes for the BBC channels portfolio had been from Top Gear, closely followed by Strictly Come Dancing.

Kee-Leen Irvine, MD Rapid Blue and Executive Producer of Come Dine With Me South Africa, said, “Having produced three much loved series of CDWM South Africa, we knew we had set the bar very high and would have to shift gears in order to top our previous offerings, and the team definitely pulled out all the stops!  It’s a real feather in Rapid Blue’s cap to deliver a show that achieves the highest ratings ever across an entire channel portfolio.

It wouldn’t be possible though without the wonderful, wacky South Africans who served up oodles of entertainment in each other’s homes!”

Rapid Blue has had an exciting start to 2018 following their recent Best International Format win for Shark Tank South Africa for M-Net, channel 101 on DStv, at the Annual South African Film and Television Awards 2018 (SAFTAs) and their hugely successful local commission of global hit BBC Studios format, Dancing With The Stars South Africa, also for M-Net.

Over the years, Rapid Blue has produced a range of hit television series including BBC Studio’s The Great South African Bake Off, Come Dine With Me South Africa as well as SA’s Got Talent, Is’thunzi, The X Factor, Four Weddings and Pawn Stars to name but a few. Rapid Blue has established a trend of producing highly successful local versions of many of the world’s leading formats for South African screens.

Audiences can tuck into a second helping of the ratings hit series, as it is currently being repeated on BBC Lifestyle, DStv channel 174, on Tuesday evenings at 9pm.