Overnights: New Tricks retains the Thursday night crown

New Tricks held on to the number one Thursday evening peak-hour slot with a high of more than 7.1 million viewers.

The popular BBC One drama, starring Amanda Redman and Alun Armstrong, attracted over 6.9 million average viewers and a 30.4% audience share between 9pm and 10pm.

The Bill‘s ratings, meanwhile, slipped down even further. ITV1’s police drama, which has recently been revamped to be more edgy in its new post-watershed slot, only secured 3.8 million peak viewers, down by half a million on last week.

ITV’s recent schedule shake-up, which saw it move Coronation Street from Wednesday evening to Thursday and The Bill to the later time of 9pm, hasn’t proved successful for the long-running Sunhill drama.

The first episode of the new-look Bill pulled in 4.5 million viewers, down from 4.8 million in its final 8pm slot, while the second Thursday night 9pm episode picked up 4.3 million viewers.

However, ITV1’s early evening line-up has been better-received. Last night, ITV1’s soap run secured the highest ratings between 7pm and 9pm, with the exception of BBC One’s 7.30pm to 8pm Eastenders slot.

Coronation Street and Eastenders both attracted an equally high 7.4 million peak viewers but BBC One’s flagship soap banked the highest audience share with an average of 38.3%.

Elsewhere, BBC Two’s humorous quiz Mock the Week came third in the peak-hour ratings war with 2.2 million average viewers and a 9.7% audience share.

At the same time, Channel 4’s second How the Other Half Live pulled in 2.1 million peak viewers, while Five’s The Mentalist picked up a high of 1.5 million.

Overnight data is available each morning in MediaTel’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks and key multi-channel stations.