Submarine based drama Vigil attracted a huge audience, making it the UK’s most watched new drama in three years

The six-part submarine thriller’s first episode attracted an audience of 13.4 million viewers, making it the highest rated new drama launch across all UK channels since Bodyguard back in 2018.

Vigil has been a hit with viewers and critics alike, and grew its audience across the series on both overnight and 7-day consolidated viewing data.

Starring Suranne Jones, Rose Leslie, Shaun Evans, Paterson Joseph and Martin Compston, the series was set and filmed in Scotland and still available on iPlayer.

The data shows how Vigil attracted its audience

So far (the 28-day data is not yet available from BARB), we have the 7-day data:

Episode one – 10.2 million viewers

Episode two – 9.0 million viewers

Episode three – 9.7 million viewers

Episode four – 9.5 million viewers

Episode five – 10.2 million viewers

Episode six – 10.9 million viewers

It’s interesting to see the dip from episode one then the steady growth from episode two. We can’t tell if this is two sets of viewers or one set coming back to the show after a break (probably a mix of both).

Overall, Vigil was the second most watched drama of 2021 so far, after series six of Line of Duty.