TV Overnights: BBC One’s Hustle cons Law & Order out of the peak-hour top spot

BBC One’s long-running drama Hustle managed to secure the highest ratings during the all-important 9pm to 10pm peak-hour ahead of its ITV1 rival last night.

Hustle pulled in more than 5.8 million peak viewers and a 21.6% average audience share during the hour-long slot, despite losing out to Law & Order: UK in the first fifteen minutes.

Law & Order: UK, which stars Bradley Walsh and Freema Agyeman, started off on a high of 5.7 million viewers at 9pm but slipped down to 5.3 million average viewers and a lower 20.9% share during the full 9pm to 10pm slot.

However, both programmes’ ratings came well ahead of the remaining three terrestrial channels during the peak-hour.  Channel 4’s Tower Block of Commons took third place with 1.7 million average viewers and a 6.8% share, while Five’s Paul Merton in Europe pulled in 1.5 million viewers and a 6.1% share.

Meanwhile, BBC Two’s new three part series Generation Jihad, which follows journalist Peter Taylor as he investigates the small number of British Muslim teenagers who are persuaded to join terrorist groups, attracted just 1.1 million average viewers and a 4.4% audience share.

Earlier on in the evening, the soaps battled it out for the top pre-watershed spot.  BBC One’s Eastenders peaked with 10.6 million viewers ahead of ITV1’s Coronation Street‘s 10.5 million.

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.