TV Overnights: Kara’s Strictly win attracts over 14m viewers

BBC One danced its way through the last weekend before Christmas with an impressive line-up of season finales including Strictly Come Dancing and The Apprentice.

Two episodes of this year’s Strictly final dominated the Saturday evening ratings – the first show, which saw Pamela leave, attracted more than 14.1 million peak viewers and a 45.8% average audience share between 7pm and 8pm.

Meanwhile, the hour-long results show, on at the later time of 9.05pm, pulled in a high of more than 13.6 million viewers and a 47.6% average share.

BBC One held the top spot all evening, with 6.5 million viewers tuning in for Total Wipeout: Celebrity Special, a high of 6.6 million watching Casualty and over four million viewing Match of the Day at 10.30pm.

On Sunday, the channel enjoyed a peak ratings run once again, with Countryfile Winter Special, Sports Personality of the Year and the final Apprentice.

The new Countryfile picked up more than 7.1 million peak viewers, before the sporting awards scored a slightly higher peak audience of 9.1 million viewers.  However, The Apprentice stole the show with 10.3 million peak viewers.

It was finally decision time for Lord Sugar, who picked Stella to be his latest Apprentice after the final task showed her being a more deserving winner than Chris.

Over on ITV1, the channel’s Saturday night line-up featured The Cube: Celebrity Special with Kelly Osbourne and Joe Squash, Take Me Out and Bridget Jones’ Diary, which peaked with 2.2 million viewers.

Meanwhile, on Sunday evening, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix secured the highest ratings of the day for ITV1 – peaking with over six million viewers at 8.30pm.

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.