UKTV to drop more full episodes on YouTube as broadcaster hails ‘best year yet’
U and U&DRAMA detective series The Marlow Murder Club
UK multi-channel broadcaster UKTV will double down on its YouTube and social media strategy after posting record ratings and audience share figures during 2025.
Last year marked the company’s strongest year to date across social media, with UKTV’s social team delivering 758 million social video views (up 29% year-on-year), driving close to 400,000 visitors to streamer U.
In late summer, the social division evolved its YouTube strategy, shifting from channel-led brands to genre-based destinations designed for a YouTube-first audience.
This saw YouTube channels U&YESTERDAY and U&Dave relaunched as U&Transport and U&Laughs respectively, alongside a refresh of the core U channel. The team also launched its first single-IP channel, U&Bangers & Cash, dedicated to factual series Bangers & Cash. Collectively, the new channel portfolio delivered 4.1 million hours of watch time (up 243%), according to UKTV.
Buoyed by that success, UKTV said it will continue to experiment with full episode drops on the Google-owned video sharing platform during 2026.
Among the shows of which it has been uploading full episodes include David Mitchell’s Outsiders, Mel Giedroyc: Unforgivable, Hypothetical, Pete Wicks: For Dogs’ Sake and The Marlow Murder Club.
The BBC Studios-owned company also saw improvements in its linear operations during 2025, with its network share growing from 4.8% in 2024 to 4.97% last year (up 3%), representing UKTV’s biggest share to date for its seven linear channels.
The performance of UKTV networks also improved, with audience share rises for brands U&alibi (up 13%), U&Dave (up 5%), U&YESTERDAY (up 4%) and U&DRAMA (up 2%), along with U&eden (up 76%), marking its first full year of being free to air.
Rebooted detective drama Bergerac was watched by 2.4 million viewers across U and U&DRAMA, making it the highest-rating show on the network last year. Other popular shows included The Chelsea Detective, The Marlow Murder Club, Bookish and Whitstable Pearl.
In streaming, views of U grew by 15%, average monthly active users were boosted by 23% and registrations lifted by 18%.
Marcus Arthur, CEO of UKTV, said: “Record-breaking viewing across both streaming and linear is clear evidence that our strategy is working.
“By investing decisively in digital while strengthening our linear offer, we’ve positioned the business for sustainable success. Our focused choices in content, product and marketing have enabled us to accelerate our growth trajectory, even against a rapidly shifting media landscape and challenging macroeconomic conditions.”
Andrea Amey, chief digital officer at UKTV, said: “2025 marked the first full year of UKTV’s transformation under our new masterbrand, U – and the results speak for themselves. Our streaming service has benefited enormously from a bold, cohesive brand identity that unites the platform with our family of TV channels.
“We’ve delivered strong growth in viewing, active users and registrations, fuelled by a compelling content offer, enhanced functionality, improved personalisation and broader availability.”
