Spooks lures 5.2m to BBC One

by Dan Leahul, Brand Republic 04-Nov-08, 10:55

LONDON - BBC One's spy drama 'Spooks' provided the right mixture of suspense and bone-dry humour to win the prime-time slot last night, drawing 5.2m viewers and a 21.5% audience share, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The seventh season of the Bafta award-winning series kicked off last week and has consistently drawn more than 5m viewers over the first three episodes.

ITV1's long-running Glaswegian detective series 'Taggart' followed closely pulling 4.9m and a 20.2% audience share, in what is now its 25th season.

'The Unsinkable Titanic', a new drama-documentary aired on Channel 4, was watched by 2.3m for a 10% audience share. The programme argued that a complicated sequence of events, including human errors and plain bad luck -- rather than just the iceberg -- sealed the fate of the seemingly unsinkable liner. An extra 200,000 viewers watched on Channel 4+1.

The concluding half of 'Prescott: The Class System and Me' followed closely on BBC Two, drawing 2.1m and an 8.8% audience share.

The documentary followed former deputy prime minister John Prescott and wife Pauline as they dissected the class system in the UK, laying out the theory that class will always exist due to the British education system.

Channel 5's adventure series 'Unbreakable' rounded out the 9pm slot with 900,000 viewers and a 3.7% audience share. This week the challengers faced trials at the hands of the US Navy Seals.