ITV1’s first non-celebrity Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in two years proved too strong for the second part of BBC1 drama Blackout, which lost 1.5m viewers.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (ITV1) 9pm-10pm
3.91m (16.97%) / 164k (0.91%) +1

The popular quiz format, fronted by Chris Tarrant, returned for a short run of live episodes putting members of the public in the hot seat.

It got off to solid start, easily outmanoeuvring BBC1’s Blackout and beating every episode in the last non-celebrity series of Millionaire in 2010, which averaged 3.32m (14.58%).

However, the quiz was more than a million viewers short of ITV1’s slot average of 5.35m (21.57%) for the past 12 months, according to overnight Barb figures supplied by Attentional.

It was also below some recent live celebrity specials, including a Mother’s Day special earlier this year that drew 5.43m (21.44%).

Blackout (BBC1) 9pm-10pm
2.93m (12.72%)

It was a dark evening for BBC1’s Christopher Eccleston drama after losing 1.5m on last week’s debut performance of 4.47m (19.62%).

Monday’s instalment started with more than a 3m viewers but this waned to 2.91m over the period it was on air.

Double Cross: the True Story of the D-Day Spies (BBC2) 9pm-10pm
2.3m (10%)

The World War II documentary proved popular for BBC2, outgunning the channel’s slot average of 1.68m (6.77%) for the past year.

Undercover Boss (C4) 9pm-10pm
1.72m (7.5%) / 293k (1.7%) +1

Channel 4’s factual format pulled in an almost identical audience to last week, but could only manage fourth place in the 9pm battle.

Big Brother (C5) 9pm-10pm
1.38m (6%) / 133k (0.74%) +1

The Channel 5 reality show also barely budged, meaning it remained rooted in last place.

Volcano Live (BBC2) 8pm-9pm
2.28m (9.89%) / 213k (0.92%) HD

Earlier in the evening, Kate Humble and Professor Iain Stewart’s four-day exploration of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupted into life with around 2.5m viewers.

It devastated competition on C4 and C5 and topped BBC2’s slot average of 2.17m (8.88%).

Topics