Three Million Watch Malcolm And Barbara

ITV1’s controversial film Malcolm and Barbara: Love’s Farewell finally hit our screens last night, but it was beaten in the 9pm ratings battle by Waking The Dead and Big Brother.

The ITV documentary, which had a peak of three million adult viewers (a 16.4% audience share), has been much mentioned in the news recently, with claims that it purported to show the dying breath of Malcolm Pointon being eventually refuted by the show’s maker Paul Watson.

However, a repeat of Waking The Dead on BBC One managed to get a peak of 4.1 million adults (a 21.4% share) in its 9pm time-slot.

The cold-case detective show, featuring the ruggedly handsome Trevor Eve as Boyd, managed to keep an average of 3.6 million adults hooked throughout its hour long running time.

Over on Channel 4 at 9pm was Big Brother, in which a selection of dimwits faffed about for an hour in an edited highlights package.

A peak of 3.3 million adults (a 17.1% share) watched the goings on in the house.

It was a great night for telly addicts, with BBC Two showing the latest instalment of the awesome sci-fi series Heroes.

Last night saw Niki forced to repay her debt to Mr Linderman whilst Hiro and Ando hit a casino. Heroes had a peak of 2.6 million adult viewers.

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.

BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com Channel 4: 020 7396 4444 www.channel4.com