TV Overnights: New Midsomer Murders kills off the competition
ITV1’s new Midsomer Murders series killed off competition from BBC One’s all-new Waterloo Road and Channel 4’s new Heston Blumenthal documentary during prime time last night.
The crime drama, which stars John Nettles as DCI Tom Barnaby, attracted more than 6.3 million peak viewers and a 24.8% average audience share during the 8pm to 10pm slot.
However, Waterloo Road didn’t do too badly for BBC One during the hour-long 8pm to 9pm slot. The return of the school drama series with Eva Pope and Angela Griffin picked up a high of 5.2 million viewers and a 21.2% average audience share.
Crimewatch followed with 4.3 million peak viewers and a 17.6% share during the all-important peak hour. The programme, presented by Kirsty Young and Rav Wilding, focused on the case of Melanie Hall, whose remains were recently found by the M5.
Meanwhile, BBC Two’s new Tuesday evening line-up featured the first of a 14-part Natural World series with biologist Lynn Rogers and Andrew Marr’s the Making of Modern Britain.
Natural World pulled in 2.3 million average viewers and a 10% audience share between 8pm and 9pm, while the first of six episodes of Andrew Marr‘s insight into Britain at the dawn of the 20th century attracted 2.1 million average viewers and a 9.1% share.
Over on Channel 4, Did Heston Change Little Chef? – a one-off programme which saw the Michelin-starred chef revisit the branch of Little Chef that he tried to turn around six months ago – picked up 2.1 million average viewers and a 9% share between 9pm and 10pm.
Five’s 9 o’clock film Collateral Damage, a action thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, didn’t fare quite so well in the peak-time ratings war. The film settled on 946,000 viewers and a 4.7% share, despite peaking with 1.2 million viewers just after 10pm.
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.