10 most complained about television shows of 2018

This year’s X Factor served as a ratings bomb, and the new judges – Louis Tomlinson, Robbie Williams and Ayda Field were widely panned. However, it was former judge Cheryl’s hypersexualised performance of her new track ‘Love Made Me Do It’ that sparked the most Ofcom complaints – 104 to be exact. While an additional 95 were over the embarassing sound difficulties during live peformances of contenders Anthony Russell and Danny Tetley.

This year’s I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! was a ratings triumph for ITV and Holly Willoughby excelled as she stepped into Ant McPartlin’s hosting shoes. However, as per every year since the show began in 2002, many Ofcom complaints were filed over the use of animals as entertainment in the show. Crocodiles, various creepy crawlies, snakes and goats were used in this year’s series, which prompted 180 complaints over animal cruelty.

This Morning may seem like a cosy morning British show, but at least once a week a shocking or unintentionally rude moment will almost certainly occur. 402 complaints were received to Ofcom this year about the daytime telly stalwart, 133 of which were over a doctor who stated that breast milk had no nutritional value for children over two-years-old.

Piers Morgan has helped boost unprecedented ratings for Good Morning Britain, but this is at least in part for his love of causing controversy and indeed stirring the pot. The morning talk show received 548 complaints in 2018, 85 of which argued Morgan displays an unfair bias to his friend and former The Celebrity Apprentice boss President Donald Trump.

Emmerdale proved yet again that despite being set in a remote Yorkshire village – it is undeniably a truly dangerous place to call home. This year poor Ross Barton became a victim of an acid attack, which left his face and neck partially scarred for life. The truly shocking and pre-watershed storyline sparked 366 complaints.

Coronation Street received 1,098 Ofcom complaints this year. Many of which were for miscellaneous and unconnected reasons, but 214 were over David Platt’s male rape storyline. The reformed soap badboy became a tragic victim of male rape after he befriended newcomer Josh Tucker. The mechanic spiked Platt’s drink in a bar, and in harrowing scenes, raped him.

This year’s Love Island was the highest rated series of the franchise yet, but it also received over 4,000 Ofcom complaints. 2,644 of these were over Danny Dyer’s daughter Dani, who the complainers accused the show of gaslighting the young woman. Careful editing made it appear that her villa boyfriend Jack Fincham was cheating on her, when in actual fact the show’s producers had simply flown in one of his ex partners for some added drama.

The English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson completed a controversial interview with Sky News in October. Robinson admitted he didn’t care about offending Muslims and that he believed he was morally right to expose the men involved in a suspected grooming ring in Canterbury. However, the interview received over 3,400 complaints to Ofcom, the majority of which argued Sky New used unfair editing to make Robinson appear unfavourably.

Loose Women is a deliberately divisive program, and this year proved to be particularly controversial when Kim Woodburn marched off the show live on air. The How Clean is Your House? star claimed that host Coleen Nolan had bullied her during her time on Celebrity Big Brother in 2017 and that she was continuing to do so on the ITV panel show. During their heated Loose Women confrontation Woodburn labelled Nolan ‘disgusting’ and ‘trash’ but of the 7,912 Ofcom complaints over the incident, the majority were in Woodburn’s favour.

Here it is, the most complained about television show of 2018. Channel 5’s last ever Celebrity Big Brother received an incredible 27,602 complaints. Over 25,000 of these complaints were over Roxanne Pallett’s false claims that Ryan Thomas punched her, while over an additional 1,000 were over the ‘human Ken Doll’ Rodrigo Alves using the n-word to describe to type of men he is attracted to.