Ratings round-up: The return of ‘DCI Banks’ arrests 4.7m

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The new series of crime drama DCI Banks debuted this week with a strong 4.7m viewers; so, for the second week running, ITV1 has beaten BBC One in the 9pm Wednesday night slot.

Being given the Wednesday night slot appears to be the ITV1 vote of confidence for a new drama, so goodness knows how programme makers must feel when they are given the Monday night kiss-of-death slot.

This is the position that the second series of James Nesbitt’s medical drama Monroe found itself in this week. Opening with a relatively healthy 3.2m (14%) viewers, the show’s debut is still way behind New Tricks which once again broke the 7m viewers barrier and claimed a 29.7% share of the audience.

Round 2 also saw the BBC emerge the victors as Hunted proved to be the most-popular-drama-beginning-with-a-‘H’-on-a-Thursday, attracting 3.4m (15.1%) viewers up against ITV1’s Homefront, which could only muster 2.4m (10.8%).

The icing on the cake for the BBC was probably added by The Paradise on Tuesday, which saw a rise in viewers for its third episode, drawing 4.9m (21.6%).

Mixed fortunes befell Channel 4’s comedy output this week, following Friday Night Dinner‘s disappointing launch last weekend, with Series 2 of Fresh Meat launching to only 1.1m (6.5%) viewers; a drop of 600k on the first episode of Series 1.

The third episode of Cuckoo on BBC Three shipped another 200k viewers as it fell to 593k (3.2%); but Dave (the channel not Lister) will be pleased with the 1.1m (4.8%) viewers that saw the second episode of Red Dwarf X.

Over on Channel 5 it will come as no shock to regular readers that Person of Interest and Dallas both attracted 1.2m viewers on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, as they continue to be the two shows on TV you can virtually set your ratings watch to.

We finish this week with Doctor Who news as the consolidated figures for ‘The Angels Take Manhattan’ show that it was seen by 7.8m viewers, making it the third most watched episode of Series 7 so far.

> Pre-order Red Dwarf: Series X on DVD on Amazon.

Watch the trailer for The Paradise




All data was supplied by Attentional, Digital Spy and The Guardian.

What did you enjoy on TV this week? Let us know below…

> Read more from Chris in his blog, Boyle’s Law.