Meat (Torchwood) - Broadcast

Broadcast

On overnight returns, The Guardian reported that the episode had an 11% audience share and 2.9 million viewers for its first BBC Two broadcast at 9pm on 6 February. According to consolidated figures released by the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board the episode's first broadcast had an estimated total audience of 3.28 million viewers. The episode had an audience appreciation index of 85, regarded as excellent. A late night repeat of the episode aired on BBC sister channel BBC Three the same night at 11pm and a further pre-watershed repeat, edited to be child friendly, of the episode aired the next day, 7 February, at 7pm. Stephen James Walker, a writer of reference works on Doctor Who and its spin-offs, noted that "Meat" "was one of the more heavily-edited episodes of the series for it's pre-watershed repeat". Cut scenes included "some of the particularly gory scenes" and an exchange between Gwen and Jack which implied the latter performing oral sex on an alien. The dialogue in Gwen and Rhys' big argument was also censored with two instances of the phrase "piss off!" being removed, whilst Rhys' line "you fucking him (Jack), or what?" was redubbed to the less profane "you seeing him, or what?". The edited repeat had an air time of 49m 33s, as opposed to the original episode's air time of 50m 15s. Overnight ratings suggested that the pre-watershed version of the episode was viewed by 1.00 million viewers and had a 4.9% audience share. Final figures released by BARB indicated that the total viewing figures for the BBC3 repeat and the pre-watershed BBC2 repeat were 0.37 million viewers and 1.09 million viewers respectively, giving the episode an aggregated total of 4.74 million viewers across its three initial broadcasts.

A corresponding 10 minute episode of Torchwood Declassified, a behind the scenes documentary on the production of the show, entitled "Save the Whale" was broadcast on BBC Two following the episode between 9.50pm and 10pm and featured contributions from Tregenna, Davies, Teague, Myles and Owen.