TV Overnights: The Bill secures the Thursday night top spot

ITV1’s long-running police drama The Bill secured the highest ratings during the all-important peak-hour last night for the first time since it moved to the post-watershed slot.

The Bill pulled in more than 4.3 million peak viewers and a 16.8% average audience share between 9pm and 10pm, seeing off competition from BBC One’s rival crime drama Silent Witness.

However, Silent Witness came a close second in the peak-hour ratings war with 3.9 million peak viewers and a 15.3% audience share.

BBC Two’s Mock the Week, meanwhile, picked up more than 2.7 million average viewers and a 11.4% share between 9pm and 9.30pm, before Rab C Nesbitt pulled in 1.7 million average viewers and a 7.3% share in the final 30-minutes of the peak-slot.

Elsewhere, Channel 4’s new Cutting Edge documentary Leaving Home at 8, which follows a group of 8-year-old girls as they leave home for boarding school, attracted a high of two million viewers and a 8% audience share.

Over on Channel Five, Extreme Fishing with Robson Green picked uo 1.6 million peak viewers and a 6.6% average audience share.

Earlier on in the evening, BBC One’s Eastenders pipped ITV1’s Corrie to the top soap spot.  Eastenders banked 9.4 million peak viewers compared to Coronation Street‘s 9.2 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.