TV Overnights: Penultimate Criminal Justice secures the top spot

BBC One’s penultimate Criminal Justice secured the highest ratings during the all-important peak hour last night with a high of 4.3 million peak viewers.

The fourth episode in the five-part thriller series, which has been running all week, pulled in more than 4.2 million average viewers and a 18.3% share between 9pm and 10pm, despite competition from ITV1’s long-running police drama The Bill.

The new-look post-watershed Bill, meanwhile, attracted 3.8 million peak viewers and a 15.7% average audience share during the peak-slot.

Elsewhere, BBC Two’s MasterChef: The Professionals entered the quarter-final stage of the competition.  The second 45-minute programme picked up 3.1 million average viewers and a respectable 13.4% share  between 8.45pm and 9.30pm.

Never Mind the Buzzcocks followed but failed to keep the momentum going, slipping down to 2.1 million average viewers and a 9.5% audience share between 9.30pm and 10pm.

BBC Two did, however, manage to gain a higher share than Channel 4 and Five during the peak-hour.  Channel 4’s Cutting Edge series continued with Alex: A Passion for Life, which followed a 19-year-old cystic fibrosis sufferer on his quest to conduct Bach’s ‘St Matthew Passion’ in front of his fellow students at King’s College, Cambridge.

The hour-long documentary secured 1.2 million average viewers and a 5.3% share.  Meanwhile, Five’s Vice Squad picked up 1 million peak viewers and a 4.2% average share between 9pm and 10pm.

Over on ITV2, Peter Andre’s new series The Next Chapter started on a impressive high of 1.5 million viewers.  The fly-on-the-wall documentary is a spin-off from Andre’s one-off Going it Alone show, which aired after his much-publicised split from Katie Price.

The Next Chapter will broadcast on ITV2 every Thursday from 9pm, replacing Price’s latest series What Katie Did Next, which came to an end last week.  The first episode of Andre’s series attracted more than the Price finale, which pulled in 1.1 million peak viewers.

Earlier on in the evening, BBC One’s Eastenders pipped its ITV1 rival Coronation Street to the top soap spot with a high of more than 8.5 million peak viewers and a 39.9% audience share.

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.