TV Overnights: Dancing on Ice kick-starts on a high of 9.5m viewers

Dancing on Ice returned to ITV1’s Sunday evening line-up last night with a high of more than 9.5 million peak viewers.

ITV1’s latest celebrity show, which currently rivals Channel 4’s last-ever Celebrity Big Brother series, fills the weekend gap that the The X Factor left behind since its grand final on December 13 (which pulled in over 17 million viewers).

The first show, which introduced this year’s budding contestants including Sharron Davies, Bobby Davro and Tana Ramsay as well as new judge Emma Bunton, attracted 8.8 million average viewers and a 30% audience share between 6.45pm and 8.30pm.

The later Skate Off show, meanwhile, pulled in a further 7.5 million average viewers and a 26.7% audience share. between 9.30pm and 10pm

ITV1 also brought back its popular drama Wild at Heart, starring Stephen Tompkinson and Dawn Steele, and cleverly scheduled it to appear between the two Dancing on Ice shows.

As a result, Wild at Heart easily dominated the ratings between 8.30pm and 9.30pm with more than 7.7 million average viewers and a 26.2% share.

Elsewhere, BBC One also had a new addition to its Sunday evening line-up.  The period drama Lark Rise to Candleford returned with 6.8 million average viewers and a 22.5% audience share between 8pm and 9pm.

Meanwhile, the second episode of Wallander with Kenneth Branagh dominated BBC One’s 9pm to 10pm peak-hour, picking up 5.1 million viewers and a 18.8% average audience share.

At the same time, Channel 4’s daily coverage of the Celebrity Big Brother household pulled in a high of more than 2.8 million viewers and a 9.2% average 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.