TV Overnights: Dancing on Ice skates away with 8.6m viewers

ITV1’s Sunday night line-up secured the all-important peak ratings once again, with Dancing on Ice attracting a high of more than 8.6 million viewers.

The first of the ‘real’ Dancing on Ice shows achieved an average audience of 7.6 million viewers and a 28.2% audience share between 6.10pm and 8.30pm last night, before the Skate Off show pulled in 6.7 million viewers and a 24.5% share.

As with the previous two weeks, Wild at Heart also held on to the peak audience during the in-between slot. This week, the hour-long Stephen Tompkinson drama picked up 6.8 million average viewers and a 22.7% share.

Elsewhere, BBC One’s Lark Rise to Candleford continued with 6.2 million average viewers and a 20.7% share between 8pm and 9pm, before 4.8 million viewers tuned in for the new two-part series Terry Wogan’s Ireland.

Over on BBC Two, all-new Top Gear returned with an impressive 5.9 million peak viewers and a 18.2% share between 8pm and 9pm.

On Saturday, BBC One’s schedule dominated the peak ratings throughout most of the day and evening slots. The channel’s sports line-up proved popular among viewers during the day, with Football Focus attracting 1.8 million viewers, the Australian Open Tennis pulling in 1.1 million viewers and Live Bowls picking up one million viewers.

Later on, Total Wipeout and The Magicians banked an equal 5.2 million average viewers, while the National Lottery peaked with more than six million viewers at 8pm.

Casualty followed with 6.1 million peak viewers, before Come Fly with Me, which settled on 2.7 million viewers between 9.40pm and 10.10pm.

On ITV1, Primeval secured 3.6 million viewers between 7pm and 8pm, Take Me Out banked four million viewers between 8pm and 9.15pm, and Benidorm attracted 2.6 million viewers between 9.15pm and 10.15pm.

The second episode of ITV1’s Benidorm went head to head with Channel 4’s British Comedy Awards, which settled on a slightly lower 2.5 million viewers and a 11.5% average share between 9pm and 11.05m.

At the same time, Channel 5’s CSI run peaked with 2.1 million viewers at 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.