TV Overnights: Penultimate Blue Murder secures 4.8m viewers

The penultimate episode of ITV1’s Blue Murder series secured the top spot for most of the all-important peak-hour last night with a high of 4.8 million viewers.

The police drama starring Caroline Quentin pulled in a respectable 4.6 million average viewers and a overall 19.6% audience share between 9pm and 10pm, but slipped down to a slightly lower 4.3 million viewers the final fifteen minutes.

BBC One’s new five-part thriller Criminal Justice, meanwhile, split the ratings during prime time after banking almost 5 million peak viewers between 9.45pm and 10pm.  However, the programme, which stars Maxine Peake, attracted an average of 4.4 million viewers and a 18.8% audience share throughout the whole hour-long slot.

At the same time, the second episode of Five’s brand new FlashForward series continued to be a hit for the channel, picking up 3.3 million peak viewers and a 13.8% average audience share.  The US sci-fi drama with Joseph Fiennes banked even more viewers than its opening week, when it debuted with 3 million average viewers and a 12.7% share.

Elsewhere, Channel 4’s Daredevils series continued with 1.1 million average viewers and a 4.8% share, while BBC Two’s Design for Life picked up 1.1 million peak viewers in the first fifteen minutes but settled on 980,000 average viewers and a 4.1% share during the one-hour slot.

Earlier on in the evening, Coronation Street pipped Eastenders to the top soap spot with a high of more than 9.2 million viewers.  BBC One’s Eastenders, meanwhile, attracted 8.7 million peak viewers and a lower 36.5% 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.