TV Overnights: Married Single Other attracts almost 7m peak viewers

ITV1’s new comedy drama Married Single Other attracted the highest ratings during the all-important peak-hour last night with almost 7 million viewers.

The first episode of the new six-part romantic drama, which stars Amanda Abbington, Lucy Davis, Shaun Dooley, Dean Lennox Kelly, Ralf Little and Miranda Raison, pulled in more than 6.2 million average viewers and a 25.5% audience share between 9pm and 10pm, putting it a fair way ahead of BBC One’s rival drama New Tricks.

BBC One’s long-running crime drama, with Alun Armstrong and Amanda Redman, picked up 4.3 million average viewers and a 17.8% audience share during the hour-long slot.

Elsewhere, Five’s 9 o’clock film The Bone Collector banked third place in the post-watershed ratings war with 1.3 million average viewers and a 6.7% audience share from 9pm onwards.

Channel 4’s Tower Block of Commons and BBC Two’s Generation Jihad, meanwhile, both slipped below the one million viewer mark during the hour-long 9pm to 10pm slot.

Tower Block of Commons settled on 897,000 viewers and a 3.7% average share, while Generation Jihad secured just 772,000 viewers and a 3.2% share.

Earlier on in the evening, BBC One and ITV1’s soap line-up dominated the ratings.  Eastenders managed to pip Corrie to the top spot with a high of more than 11.4 million viewers, following its bumper ratings of over 16.1 million viewers for Friday’s live episode.

However, revelations about Joe’s whereabouts helped boost Coronation Street‘s ratings to more than 11 million peak viewers and a 43.5% average 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.