Walliams Brings The Viewers To Hotel Babylon

BBC One’s over-the-top drama, Hotel Babylon, had a peak of 6.5 million viewers last night, a 31.9% share of viewing, in its 9pm timeslot.

The show, which attracted an average of 6.3 million adults, featured David Walliams, star of Little Britain, in a guest appearance.

Hotel Babylon added over a million to the audience figure for the first episode of the series, which aired last week (see Triumphant Return For Hotel Babylon).

The ITV1 double bill of comedy, which sees Bonkers followed rather alliteratively by Benidorm, performed admirably in the face of Hotel Babylon and the mighty BBC News, but was no real match for the BBC.

Bonkers, at 9pm, has apparently arrested the slide in viewers which affected it after its debut show, and managed to bring in an average audience of 2.6 million adults (a 12.7% share of the audience), whilst its peak figure of 2.8 million adults was actually up on last week.

At 10pm, the Johnny Vegas vehicle Benidorm attracted a peak audience of 3.6 million adults, a 19.5% share of the audience.

Also on at 10pm on BBC Two was Graham Norton’s new show, which brought in a peak audience of 2,1 million adults for its debut, an 11% share of the audience.

Meanwhile, the Richard and Judy show, on Channel 4 at 5pm, does not seem to be suffering from the controversy surrounding its You Say, We Pay quiz (see Richard & Judy Phone Quiz Controversy Takes New Twist), as it picked up an average audience of two million adults.

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 Channel Four: 020 7396 4444 www.channel4.com