BBC One Edges Bank Holiday Battle
A suitably sinister looking David Suchet crept about our screens on Friday night in BBC Two’s Maxwell, when the star of Poirot stepped into the shoes of Robert Maxwell.
Maxwell told the story of the corrupt fraudster’s last months, as his tangled web of deceit unravelled around him.
The hour and a half show attracted a peak audience of three million adult viewers, a 16.2% share, and an average of 2.9 million adults.
On Saturday, the first instalment of BBC One’s Any Dream Will Do easily beat ITV1’s Grease Is The Word into second place, with the wannabe Josephs managing a peak of five million adults, compared with Grease‘s peak of 4.1 million.
The second instalment of Any Dream Will Do, which had a peak of 5.1 million adults, saw Chris voted off the show, with Andrew Lloyd Webber saying to him: “I don’t think a West End audience would ever have the confidence to see you in performance.”
On Grease Is The Word meanwhile, Richard Morgan and Joanna Power, the self-styled underdogs of the show, lived up to their billing and were booted off.
Sunday saw the return of Dalziel And Pascoe to BBC One, and the cop drama picked up a peak of 5.6 million adult viewers in its 9pm slot, a 25.1% share of the audience.
Also on at 9pm, on ITV1, was the Stephen Fry vehicle Kingdom. The Norfolk based comedy drama had a peak of five million adult viewers and an average of 4.9 million.
Bank holiday Monday saw a wealth of quality TV, with viewers able to choose between soaps on ITV1 and BBC One, snooker on BBC Two, an hilarious Steve Martin comedy on Channel 4, amongst other things.
Apart from the soaps, which performed in their usual sterling manner, BBC One’s New Tricks was the outstanding performer of the night, with a peak audience of 7.3 million adults.
The team of veteran investigators looked back at the 1950s murder of a young wages clerk at Battersea Power Station. The episode also included guest appearances from George Cole and Roy Hudd.
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