BBC1’s Poldark finished on a high on Sunday night as 5.9 million viewers tuned in to the watch the first season finale of the hit period drama.
The final episode of the eight-part Poldark, which stars a smouldering Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark, attracted almost 500,000 more viewers than tuned into the penultimate episode.
The drama, a remake of the 1970s classic, attracted a 25.4% share of all TV viewers between 9pm and 10pm.
It easily outpaced ITV’s offering, the final episode of the fifth series of Vera which ran from 8pm to 10pm, which drew 4.9m viewers and a 22% share of the total TV audience in its slot.
Poldark has been a bona fide hit, helping BBC1 to its highest ratings share for the first quarter of the year in a decade.
While the drama has been recommissioned for a second eight-part run, which will cover books three and four in Winston Graham’s series of novels, later episodes in the first series have not been able to match the popularity of the show’s first few weeks.
Poldark launched on 8 March with an audience of almost 7million, with viewing boosted by the fact it launched on the back of the final episode of the fourth series of Call the Midwife, which drew 8.7 million viewers.
The next three episodes drew 6.56 million, 6.24 million and 6.29 million viewers respectively.
However, since mid-season the drama has lost some of its steam, with episode five drawing 5.22 million viewers, episode six 5.5 million and episode seven 5.4 million.
