Blackout debuts with 4.5m

The contemporary tale of redemption, which also features Dervla Kirwan, easily won its slot despite underperforming for BBC1.

The drama launched with 4.93m (21.5%) in its first 15-minutes, but this fell by nearly 800k to 4.15m (18.3%) in its final quarter of an hour.

It meant Blackout was more than half a million viewers short of BBC1’s slot average of 5.16m (20.78%) for the past 12 months, according to overnight Barb figures supplied by Attentional.

Nigel Havers delved into the real story behind the 1981 Oscar-winning film but failed to bring home gold for ITV1 and was more than 3m below the channel’s slot average of 5.33m (21.49%).

The fourth series of the popular factual format launched with a below par audience by its own standards.

It was its lowest ever series debut and was more than 700k down on last year’s opener, which attracted an audience of 2.59m (11.22%)

However, Undercover Boss was nearly bang in line with Channel 4’s slot average of 1.78m (7.19%) for the past year.

The harrowing documentary on the London terrorist attacks in July 2005 - grounded mostly in testimonies from survivors and relatives of the dead - finished in fourth place at 9pm on Monday.

It was just below BBC2’s slot average of 1.66m (6.68%) for the past 12 months, while a repeat on BBC HD at 10.30pm secured 37k (0.31%) viewers.

Channel 5’s reality show again finished in last place, despite pulling in more viewers than last week’s episode, which entertained 1.15m (5.1%).