TV Overnights: ITV1’s new Murderland overshadows Life

ITV1’s latest crime drama Murderland started on a high of 6.5 million peak viewers last night, knocking BBC One’s new Life series off the 9pm to 10pm top spot.

The first episode of the three-part drama starring Robbie Coltrane, which replaces ITV1’s Blue Murder, attracted 6.3 million average viewers and a 25.8% audience share during the peak-hour, compared to Life‘s 4.6 million average viewers and 18.8% share.

BBC One’s ten-part documentary series with David Attenborough, which explores animal behaviour in the natural world, lost around two million viewers on its debut during the same slot last week, when it peaked with almost 7 million viewers.

Elsewhere, the relatively new but popular FlashForward series continued to be a ratings-winner for Channel Five, pulling in over 2.7 million peak viewers and a 10.6% average audience share during the all-important peak-hour.

Meanwhile, Channel 4’s new one-off documentary Age 8 and Wanting a Sex Change picked up 1.7 million average viewers and a 7.1% share compared with BBC Two’s final Design for Life, which started on 1.1 million peak viewers but slipped down to an average of 931,000 throughout the hour-long 9pm to 10pm slot.

Earlier on in the evening, Carla’s much-publicised return to Coronation Street secured a high of more than 10 million viewers for ITV1.

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.