The Apprentice comes up trumps

Sir Alan Sugar’s on-going quest for The Apprentice pulled in the highest ratings during the all-important 9pm to 10pm peak-hour last night with more than 8.1 million peak viewers.

Around 7.8 million average viewers tuned in to watch the aspiring entrepreneurs test their sales skills in the North-West of England, only to find another one of them failed to impress Sir Alan and got the boot, securing BBC One with a 31.6% average share during the hour-long slot.

Meanwhile, ITV1’s popular Midsomer Murders peaked with 4.6 million viewers in the first fifteen minutes of the two-hour-long programme, but sat behind BBC One’s top ratings with an average of 4 million viewers and a 17.2% share.

Elsewhere, Channel 4’s long-running Grand Designs with Kevin McCloud attracted over 2 million average viewers and a 8.1% share between 9pm and 10pm, while BBC Two’s three-part documentary Snow pulled in 1.2 million viewers and a 5.1% share.

At the same time, Five’s Extraordinary People series continued with just 618,000 viewers and a 2.4% share – the documentary followed the story of a man who is donating half of his live to his cancer-stricken mother in a procedure that has only been performed twice before.

Earlier on in the evening, ITV1’s soap run banked the highest ratings – Emmerdale pulled in over 6.3 million peak viewers and a 32.6% share, followed by Coronation Street, which attracted more than 8 million viewers and an impressive 38.% 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.