TV Overnights: BBC One’s Luther banks a high of 4m viewers

BBC One’s new crime drama Luther, starring The Wire‘s Idris Elba, continued to hold the Tuesday night peak-spot with a high of more than 4 million viewers last night.

The fourth episode of the six-part series, which has secured the peak-hour ratings share since it started 4 weeks ago, pulled in over 3.9 million average viewers and a 18% audience share between 9pm and 10pm, continuing BBC One’s peak run.

The channel banked the highest ratings from 7.45pm onwards last night, starting off with Eastenders, which picked up a high of more than 6.1 million viewers and a 29.8% average audience share between 7.30pm and 8pm.

Meanwhile, Holby City held the top spot throughout the pre-watershed 8pm to 9pm hour with 5.3 million peak viewers and a 24.1% average share, before Luther stole the all-important peak-hour ratings.

BBC News at Ten, Regional News and Weather and The Graham Norton Show also dominated the ratings later on in the Tuesday night line-up.

However, despite BBC One’s successful run, ITV1’s Emmerdale hit highs of over 6.8 million viewers and even managed to keep the peak-share away from the first half of BBC One’s Eastenders.

ITV1’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was less fortunate in the 8pm to 9pm slot, pulling in 3.1 million viewers and a 14.5% share, while The Bill settled on an even lower 2.9 million viewers and a 13.5% share between 9pm and 10pm.

At the same time, Channel 4’s new documentary The Twins Who Share a Brain picked up 2.1 million average viewers and a 9.7% share, while Five’s popular CSI: Crime Scene Investigation pulled in 1.8 million viewers and a 8.1% share.

The penultimate Story of Science – Power, Proof and Passion, meanwhile, attracted 1.6 million average viewers and a 7.3% audience share for BBC Two during the 9pm to 10pm peak-hour.

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.