Doc Martin Dominates At 9pm

Doc Martin, on ITV1 last night, was the big winner in the all-important 9pm slot, bagging itself a very impressive 7.9 million adult viewers (a 36.9% share of the audience).

The show, which stars Martin Clunes as the local GP in the Cornish village of Portwenn, had an average of 7.8 million adults hooked for its hour long running time.

The comedy-drama’s closest challenger was BBC One’s Silent Witness, which picked up a peak of 3.8 million adult viewers (a 17.5% share).

The repeat of the ghoulishly compulsive drama had an average audience of 3.7 million adults (a 17% share).

On BBC Two at 9pm was the documentary Windscale: Britain’s Biggest Nuclear Disaster, which told the story of how on the night of 10 October 1957, Britain stood on the precipice of a monumental nuclear tragedy.

The thought-provoking film revealed how political ambition first fuelled the fire that ripped through the core of Britain’s first nuclear reactor and then lead to the heroes of Windscale being made scapegoats.

Windscale managed a peak audience of 1.8 million adults (a 10.2% share), whilst an average of 1.6 million adults (an 8% share) stuck with it for its hour and a half duration.

It was a pretty good night for factual programmes in fact, with Channel 4’s China’s Stolen Children, on from 9pm to 11pm, picking up a peak of 1.7 million adults.

This harrowing documentary looked at the sale of children in the world’s most powerful communist state, which operates a strict one child policy for families.

An average of 1.3 million adults (a 6.7% share) stayed with the programme throughout its running time.

Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks, ITV2 and Sky One.

BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com