Nature’s Great Events finale pulls in the highest ratings

The last episode of David Attenborough’s nature documentary series pulled in more than 4.1 million peak viewers during the all-important 9pm to 10pm slot last night.

Nature’s Great Events, which saw Attenborough explore the marine life along the coast of Alaska and British Columbia, attracted over 4 million average viewers and a 17.9% share in the hour – securing BBC One with the highest ratings for most of the peak-hour.

However, Channel 4’s penultimate Grand Designs, with Kevin McCloud, managed to win over the peak audience in the final 15 minutes of the 9pm to 10pm slot – pulling in more than 4.1 million peak viewers, but managed a slightly lower overall average audience share of 17.3%.

Meanwhile, a repeat of the long-running crime drama Taggart banked 3.6 million average viewers and a 16.2% share for ITV1.

At the same time, Five’s new Extraordinary People documentary series, beginning with ‘The World’s Oldest Conjoined Twins’, picked up 1.8 million viewers, while BBC Two’s new Building the Olympic Dream programme pulled in just 762,000 viewers.

ITV1 secured the highest early evening ratings with a run of Emmerdale, Coronation Street and The Bill – the three ever-popular programmes attracted 6.6 million, 8.8 million and 4.8 million average viewers respectively.

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.