Ashes To Ashes Leaves Competition For Dust

Hard bitten cop Gene Hunt returned to our screens last night in the follow up series to time travelling period piece Life On Mars, catching villains in ’80s London in Ashes To Ashes.

Hunt (Philip Glenister) has been joined by a new time-warped sidekick in the shape of Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), stranded in 1981 after being shot.

The fast and furious cop drama picked up a peak audience of 6.7 million adult viewers (a 29.5% share of the audience) in its 9pm slot, with an average of 6.6 million adults (a 29.4% share) sticking with it throughout its hour long running time.

It was up against an altogether darker detective drama on ITV1 at the same time, with Trial And Retribution focusing on the aftermath of Gary Webster’s suicide.

Trial And Retribution had a peak audience of five million adult viewers (a 22.5% share), while an average of 4.9 million adults (a 21.7% share) stuck with it for its hour long running time.

Prior to that on ITV1 was The Bill, which featured a riot on the dreaded Jasmine Allen estate in the last part of an eight episode story.

As usual, Smithy got his man and a peak of 5.2 million adults watched the explosive drama unfold.

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