Sky Atlantic’s £25m series Fortitude launched with just over 700,000 viewers on Thursday night – the four-year-old channel’s biggest audience to date for a UK originated drama.
Fortitude averaged 722,000 viewers and a 3.5% audience share from 9pm – nearly 20 times the normal ratings for that Sky Atlantic slot. Only Game of Thrones regularly attracts a similar or bigger audience for the channel.
The heavily-marketed Arctic circle murder mystery features an impressive international cast, including Stanley Tucci, Sofie Gråbøl, Michael Gambon, Christopher Eccleston and Jessica Raine.
Fortitude is expected to be the most watched show in pay-TV homes on Thursday and came within a whisker of beating the 9pm competition on BBC2 and Channel 4.
Channel 4’s Russell T Davies drama Cucumber averaged 800,000 viewers, down from 1.1 million for last week’s opening episode, as did BBC2’s 9pm offering, the revived Modern Times documentary strand’s first offering The Vikings are Coming.
Cucumber’s E4 companion show Banana averaged 305,000 viewers from 10pm, compared to 408,000 for last Thursday’s first outing.
BBC1’s Death in Paradise continued to rule the 9pm roost, averaging 7 million and a 29.9% share, against the concluding episode of ITV documentary series Bring Back Borstal (1.9 million) and Channel 5’s Celebrity Big Brother (3 million).
