Overnights: New Tricks secures the top spot

BBC One’s ever-popular New Tricks secured the highest ratings during the Thursday evening peak-hour once again with more than 7.1 million viewers.

The third episode in the eight-part series, starring Amanda Redman and Dennis Waterman, attracted over 6.9 million average viewers and a 29.6% share between 9pm and 10pm.

At the same time, ITV1’s long-running police drama The Bill, which has been revamped to be more edgy in its new post-watershed slot, pulled in a high of 4.3 million viewers and a 17.8% average share.

The new-look Bill‘s ratings slipped slightly on last week’s 4.5 million average viewers and even more so on the series’ 4.8 million viewers from the previous week, before it moved to the later time of 9pm.

Elsewhere, BBC Two’s topical quiz Mock the Week picked up over 2.2 million peak viewers and a decent 9.3% average share, while Channel 4 and Five battled it out for fourth place in the prime time ratings war.

Channel 4’s new three-part documentary programme How the Other Half Live, which saw a wealthy family assist and less-privileged one, just managed to pip Five’s The Mentalist with 1.7 million average viewers compared to Five’s 1.5 million.

Earlier on in the evening, ITV1’s new Thursday evening soap schedule dominated the ratings, with the exception of BBC One’s 30-minute Eastenders slot.

Coronation Street secured the overall highest viewing figures of the evening with 7.5 million peak viewers at the show’s new time of 8.30pm.

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 and key multi-channel stations.