England vs Wales rugby crowd down on previous clashes

England’s victorious performance peaked with 7.5m (40.4%) at 5:56pm, down on the peak of last year’s equivalent fixture, which scored a peak of 8.4m (35.5%) in a Friday evening slot.

The game was also unable to outscore the average audience of 8.5m (38.5%) who tuned in to watch England’s defeat by Wales in the Rugby World Cup on a Saturday evening in September. That clash peaked with 11.6m (49.4%).

Earlier in the day, 1.6m (17.7%) watched Ireland comfortably beat Italy from 12:30pm to 3:30pm. The coverage peaked with 2.5m (24.4%) at 3:23pm.

Everton’s shock FA Cup win against Premier League champions Chelsea peaked with 5.9m (30.1%) at 7:22pm.

The Talpa and Wall to Wall singing competition format remained in line with last week’s series low.

It continued to struggle to compete with Saturday Night Takeaway, despite the Ant and Dec-fronted format falling by 200,000 from last week’s outing to a series low. The show averaged 6.4m (30.8%) from 7pm to 8:30pm.

It was followed from 8:30pm to 9:30pm by the return of Tuesday’s Child’s hypnotism format You’re Back In The Room. The show entranced 3.8m (19.2%), down on the 4.4m (21.4%) that tuned in for the first series opener.

The Jim Field Smith-directed black comedy entertained an average of 963,000 (4.9%) across its three episodes. It performed largely in line with BBC2’s 1m (5.2%) slot average, according to ratings data provided by overnights.tv.