TV Overnights: 9.6m tune if for England’s 5-1 victory

ITV’s Live International Football coverage pulled in an impressive high of more than 9.6 million peak viewers last night.

Over 7.8 million average viewers tuned in to watch England beat Croatia 5-1 to qualify for the World Cup, securing a 36.3% audience share for ITV1 between 7.30pm and 10pm.

ITV1 also pulled in the highest ratings during the early-evening slot with its long-running soap Emmerdale, which attracted 5.4 million average viewers and a 30.8% share between 7pm and 7.30pm.

The rival terrestrial channels struggled to compete with ITV during last night’s prime-time slot but BBC One’s Motorway Cops: A Traffic Cops Special – Highway Robbery did manage a respectable 3.5 million viewers between 9pm and 10pm.

Elsewhere, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA picked up 1.3 million average viewers for Channel 4, while BBC Two’s new financial drama The Last Days of Lehman Brothers pulled in 1 million viewers.

Five’s film A Perfect Murder, meanwhile, attracted 923,000 viewers and a 4.9% average audience share between 9pm and 11.15pm.

Later on in the evening, Channel 4’s much-publicised new Derren Brown series of challenges ‘The Events’ started.  At 10.35pm, The Event Live, which saw the illusionist attempt to pick out the winning National Lottery numbers (with live streaming to BBC One’s National Lottery Draw programme) pulled in 2.3 million viewers.

The 10-minute show was followed by Derren Brown: The Gathering, which banked an equally decent 2.1 million peak viewers.

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.