A Whole Bloody Lot Of You Tuned In To ‘Here Come The Habibs!’ Last Night

After weeks and weeks of fraught online discussion, and a Change.Org petition to pull it before it even went to air, Nine’s Here Come The Habibs! finally made its debut last night, and it seems a whole bloody lot of you were keen to check it out.
Based on ratings figures published this morning by TV Tonight, Habibs was the second-most watched show to be broadcast on Tuesday evening, second only to the ratings juggernaut that is My Kitchen Rules
MKR spent the last week building up hype for the “must-watch episode” of the season, in which beautiful nightmare Zana showed off her culinary skills for the first time (it turns out she has them), and the show pulled in 1.882 million viewers across the nation. 
Habibs, however, drew 1.249 million for its first episode, perhaps proving the adage that any publicity is good publicity. 
There’s no way of knowing how many of those tuned in just to hate-watch, and the real test will come when we see how many stick around next week, but for a locally-produced comedy on a commercial network, that’s still a bloody huge number.
Ahead of the show’s debut episode, we spoke to the show’s creators and cast, with Rob Shehadie (formerly of Fat Pizza) slamming the “keyboard warriors” who called for it to be pulled from the air based on its trailer. 
He said:

“They’re going off a promo where half of it wasn’t even in the show, it’s judging a book by its cover. If this show was on SBS or ABC I don’t think we would have the same backlash but it’s ’cause it’s commercial [TV]. I can tell you right now that I would never be involved in a show that makes a joke of the Lebanese race in any way.”
 

Source: TV Tonight.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV