TV Overnights: Murderland secures the top spot

ITV1’s Murderland and BBC One’s Life battled it out for the top spot during the all-important 9pm to 10pm peak hour last night.

The penultimate Murderland, ITV’s latest crime thriller starring Robbie Coltrane, started off on a high of 5.8 million viewers but lost the highest ratings to David Attenborough’s series from 9.30pm onwards.

However, Murderland pulled in an overall higher audience share during the hour-long slot with 5.4 million average viewers compared to Life‘s 5.2 million average viewers.

Elsewhere, FlashForward continued to attract high numbers to Five.  The Lost-style sci-fi drama attracted over 2.7 million peak viewers and a 11% average audience share during the 9pm to 10pm slot.

At the same time, BBC Two’s new documentary programme, The World’s Greatest Money Maker: Evan Davis Meets Warren Buffett, picked up 1.2 million average viewers and a 5.2% audience share, compared to Channel 4’s equally new documentary Race and Intelligence: Science’s Last Taboo’s 1 million viewers and 4.5% share.

Earlier on in the evening, ITV1’s Coronation Street hit a high of ten million viewers, giving it a good lead on its BBC One rival to claim the top soap spot.  The first episode of Corrie attracted 9.7 million average viewers and a 41.2% share compared to Eastenders‘ 9.1 million viewers and 37.4% 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.