Palin Sees Off Hell’s Kitchen For Sunday Night Ratings Crown

Surely there aren’t many more places left for Michael Palin to visit on the planet, but his latest journey to ‘new Europe’ lured an average of more than 7.2 million adult viewers to BBC One last night.

The programme, which featured the Nicest Man In Britain’s usual mix of travel, humour, anecdotes and breathtaking scenery, managed a 32.3% viewing share between 9pm and 10pm, comfortably beating ITV1’s penultimate serving of Hell’s Kitchen.

3.4 million viewers watched Marco Pierre White’s show, as Adele Silva and Barry McGuigan brushed up on their skills before tonight’s final.

Despite that, ITV1 had a strong Sunday night performance with banker hits Coronation Street and The Royal winning their respective ratings battles.

The hour-long edition of Coronation Street pulled in an average rating of 7.3 million, peaking at 7.8 million in the last 15 minutes of the show. Meanwhile, 60s medical drama, The Royal, attained a respectable 5.7 million viewers, with viewing remaining consistent throughout the show.

BBC One’s offerings of 14 Up 2000 and Antiques Roadshow, broadcast at the same time, had ratings of two million and 4.8 million respectively.

Elsewhere over the weekend, ITV1’s triple threat of Saturday Takeaway, X Factor and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, helped the commercial broadcaster to dominate the peak-time schedule.

Ant and Dec’s variety show managed to pull in 5.4 million viewers, while Simon Cowell’s talent show kept 5.7 million glued to their sets. Finally, Chris Tarrant’s newly revamped quiz show achieved 4.8 million viewers for its hour-long duration.

Over on BBC Two, the Heroes catch-up weekend lost out in the battle with Channel 4’s repeat showing of blockbuster Independence Day.

Kicking off Saturday’s four-and-half hour marathon, the repeat showing of the first episode attracted one million adults. Viewing figures for the rest of the repeats held steady at around 850,000. This was no competition for the Will Smith action film, however, which held sway with 2.2 million viewers between 9pm and 11.40pm.

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, ITV2 and Sky One.

ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk