The BBC1 drama The Night Manager extended its lead over Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey follow-up Doctor Thorne as the shows went head to head on Sunday night.
While Sunday’s instalment of the John Le Carré drama was watched by 200,000 more people than the previous episode – up to 6.2 million – the audience figures for ITV’s rival programme fell 100,000 on last week to 2.9 million.
The figures represented a small increase in audience share for The Night Manager, which was up 0.6 percentage points to 27.2%. And they showed a fall for Doctor Thorne, which found itself down four percentage points on last week’s 13.5% share.
The Night Manager has been winning the battle for the 9pm slot since the two programmes were pitted against each other three weeks ago and the ITV programme’s continued slide in its third week sees its audience fall by nearly a quarter on the 3.8 million who watched the debut episode.
Sunday’s episodes marked the second consecutive week that Doctor Thorne lost ground on its £20m BBC rival, which pulled in twice as many viewers as ITV’s offering last Sunday.
Despite the ratings success, there was bad news for The Night Manager’s producers as reports suggested that the series’ final two episodes had been leaked online. The Daily Mirror said it appeared that the episodes began appearing online over the weekend, well ahead of the broadcast finale on 27 March.
The paper said the leak was believed to have happened when pre-ordered DVDs arrived with customers early.
