ITV pulls Julia Bradbury series mid-run

[dutchman]

The Wonder of Britain, the ITV series hosted by former Countryfile presenter Julia Bradbury, has been pulled from the schedules after two episodes following poor ratings.



The series, which saw the presenter celebrate “Britain’s natural and man-made heritage”, only just managed to scrape a million and a half viewers in its first week despite airing in a peachy prime-time 9pm slot.

ITV has promised to air the remaining three programmes in the five-part series, which was replaced last night with Paul O’Grady’s Animal Orphans.

An ITV spokeswoman told RadioTimes.com: “ITV have taken the decision to review the scheduling of Wonder of Britain, and we will reschedule the remaining episodes in due course. It is a series we are proud of, and we will reintroduce it to viewers at some point in 2015."

Episode one of The Wonder of Britain attracted 1.31 million viewers according to overnight figures, with a further 190,000 watching on ITV HD and the same number on ITV+1. The second episode fared little better with 1.49 million watching on the main channel and an extra 510,000 on ITV HD and 130,000 on ITV+1.

Both shows performed badly compared to the main opposition on BBC1: long-running crime drama Silent Witness, which stars Emilia Fox as a forensic pathologist, attracted a consolidated audience of 6.66 million on BBC1 and BBC1 HD, and 6.32 million for the second episode.

According to sources, ITV took the decision to pull The Wonder of Britain with a heavy heart as it was the first project assigned to Bradbury after she moved from the BBC early last year.