Sky Atlantic’s big budget Arctic Circle thriller Fortitude had more than 550,000 viewers for its second episode last night, down from its opener a week ago.
Fortitude, starring Stanley Tucci, Sofie Gråbøl and Michael Gambon, was watched by 561,000 viewers, a 2.5% share from 9pm on Thursday.
It was down from 722,000 (3.5%) for the first episode of the much publicised drama, which is understood to have a consolidated audience figure – including people who watched it in the subsequent seven days – of more than 2 million.
Sky bet big with the drama, which cost around £25m to make and launched simultaneously across Europe following Sky’s £5bn purchase of Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland last year.
Half a Cucumber
Channel 4’s Russell T Davies drama Cucumber had 624,000 viewers (2.8%) for its third episode, also from 9pm.
It was just over half the 1.2 million (5.5%) who saw the opening episode of the Manchester-set series, starring Vincent Franklin, two weeks ago, slipping to 823,000 last week.
Also at 9pm, Channel 5’s Celebrity Big Brother had 2.6 million viewers (11.7%).
The second episode of the return of BBC2’s documentary series Modern Times, featuring Warwick Davis, was watched by 779,000 viewers, a 3.4% share, followed by Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe with 910,000 (5.3%).
The 9pm slot was won by BBC1’s Death in Paradise, with 6.6 million viewers (29.3%).
Sewing Bee hurdles The Jump and the Comeback comes back
BBC2’s The Great British Sewing Bee returned for a third series with 2.3 million viewers, a 10.4% share, at 8pm, leapfrogging Channel 4’s The Jump which, five parts into an eight-part run, had 1.8 million viewers, a 7.8% share.
HBO’s Lisa Kudrow comedy The Comeback returned after a 10-year gap with 86,000 viewers, a 0.5% share, at 10pm.
I feel like I’m slowly, slowly, slowly slipping under
Two new series on ITV2, with the Keith Lemon Sketch Show kicking off with 990,000 viewers, a 5.7% share, from 10pm.
It was 35% up on the channel’s three-month slot average, doing rather better than its reality TV quiz show, Reality Bites, which debuted with 321,000 (2.6%), down 42% on its slot average.
All ratings are Barb overnight figures, including live, +1 (except for BBC channels) and same day timeshifted (recorded) viewing, but excluding on demand, or other – unless otherwise stated. Figures for BBC1, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 generally include ratings for their HD simulcast services, unless otherwise stated
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