The local adaptation of The Restaurant That Makes Mistakes premiered on TVNZ1 in New Zealand this June to top ratings.

The series drew an average audience of almost 347k viewers (AP5+) for its premiere, and went on to average 292.0k viewers per week across its four episodes – a 22% increase on the average audience in its timeslot for the four weeks prior.

Over the course of the series, The Restaurant That Makes Mistakes reached 1.19 million New Zealanders – almost a quarter of the AP5+ population (24.7%) – and achieved a combined share of 31.4% of all viewers.

The social experiment is a local adaptation of the Grierson Award-winning format The Restaurant That Makes Mistakes, originally produced by CPL Productions for Channel 4 in the UK.

The format – which has already been adapted in the Netherlands and Belgium where it’s successfully aired across three and two seasons respectively – sees a group of people all living with dementia, spanning different ages and at various stages of the disease, tasked with helping run a restaurant led by a top chef. Over a five week period, and with a dementia expert on hand to advise, the group takes on all the roles of a busy restaurant, including cooking, taking orders, serving and making drinks.

The Restaurant That Makes Mistakes New Zealand is produced by Great Southern TV for TVNZ; the format is distributed globally by Red Arrow Studios International.

SOURCE: Nielsen TAM via ETAM; Consolidated; 18/6/23-9/7/23, first play only; TVNZ 1*, TVNZ 1; AP 5+; AUD/%, AVG Daily Reach/%, Cume Reach/%, Share (%)