'Undateables' a ratings hit for Channel 4 on Tuesday night

The Undateables has established itself as a hit for Channel 4, with ratings rocketing to 3 million viewers last night (January 15).



The Tuesday night reality show, about single disabled people finding love, attracted its highest ever audience of 2.87m (11.9%) in a competitive 9pm slot.

Met with controversy when commissioned, the programme averaged 2.3m (9.5%) for its three-part first run last April, with the audience having declined slightly by the final episode.

However, this time The Undateables has been on an upward spiral, with yesterday's instalment coming off air with a peak of over 3m viewers. The show also added 366,000 on Channel 4 +1.

Elsewhere, Death in Paradise continued its winning ways for BBC One, logging 6.46m (26.8%) for a less dramatic second episode - last week's return clinched nearly 7m for the corporation.

Before the 9pm drama, the channel's soap duo of EastEnders and Holby City impressed with respective audiences of 8.6m and 5.2m respectively.

Celebrity Big Brother achieved an impressive 2.24m (12.1%) in the 10pm hour, and remarkably the Channel 5 reality show was winning its slot in the programme's last 15 minutes.

With ITV deciding to screen tonight's FA Cup replay between Manchester United and West Ham, an unadvertised repeat of Agatha Christie's Marple mustered just 1.94m (8.2%) between 8pm and 10pm, appealing to a further 156k on timeshift.

Plucky BBC Two put up a strong challenge with Sarah Millican's Television Programme returning with a decent 2.35m (11.7%) at 10pm, a documentary about railways - Locomotion - kicking off with 2.46m (10.2%), and Winterwatch logging a splendid 3.16m (13.7%) at 8pm.

Finally, Channel 4's Supersize v Superskinny extended its lead over 5's Benidorm ER with 1.88m (8.2%) versus 1.4m (6.1%), and 275k against 104k on the broadcasters' respective +1 services.

Overall, BBC One reigned victorious in primetime with 24.8%, beating ITV's 11.7% (+1: 0.7%). BBC Two commanded third position with 9.8%, ahead of Channel 4's 7.3% (+1: 1.1%), and Channel 5's 5.7% (+1: 0.4%).

Primeval: New World suffered the biggest drop in UK ratings history, down from 750,000 to 150,000. Having already seen the first run on Canadian TV I'm not surprised. The only thing it has in common with the original UK series is the name and the visual effects. None of the characters is remotely interesting, the acting is wooden and the stories rely entirely on cheap shocks for their effect. It has none of the intrigue which kept viewers tuning in for the original series even after the occasional ropey episode.