TV Overnights: ITV1 sees off competition from BBC One’s new Big Top

ITV1 secured the highest-ratings throughout all of prime time last night, seeing off competition from BBC One’s new Amanda Holden comedy series Big Top, Waterloo Road and Spooks.

A special hour-long Emmerdale kicked-off the channel’s peak-run, pulling in a high of 8.1 million viewers and a 34.9% audience share between 7pm and 8pm.

Coronation Street followed with 8.6 million peak viewers between 8pm and 8.30pm, before I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, which attracted a high of more than 8.7 million viewers and a 32.6% share between 8.30pm and 10pm.

BBC One, meanwhile, aired its new six-part series with Amanda Holden and Tony Robinson at 7.30pm – at the same time as the second part of ITV1’s Emmerdale.  Big Top picked up 3.2 million average viewers and a 14.7% share.

The BBC’s popular drama Waterloo Road followed with a high of 4.2 million viewers and a 15.9% share between 8pm and 9pm.  Later on, Spooks attracted 3.9 million peak viewers and a 15.5% share during the all-important 9pm to 10pm peak-hour.

At the same time, BBC Two’s latest Andrew Marr’s The Making of Modern Britain pulled in 2 million average viewers and a 8.2% share, while Channel 4’s penultimate episode of The Queen settled on 1.6 million viewers and a 6.4% share.

Meanwhile, Five’s 9 o’clock film Half Past Dead – the action thriller starring Steven Seagal – secured a low 646,000 average viewers and a 3% audience share between 9pm and 11.05pm.

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.