Civilisations on par with Panorama Weinstein doc

The first episode of the revived factual series, which has been three years in the making, kicked off comfortably above the 1.4m (7%) slot average.

The show was broadly in line with the debut of David Olusoga’s House Through Time which opened in the same slot with 2.1m (9.7%) in January and was ahead of the opener of Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain, which informed 1.7m (7.8%) in November.

The nine-parter, which is available as a boxset on iPlayer, proved popular with older viewers – some 58% of the audience was over 65, ahead of the 44% average.

The performance helped the channel match Panorama and PBS’s co-production Weinstein: the Inside Story, which aired on BBC1 to 2m (19.6%).

The one-off was the fifth most-popular 9pm Panorama of the past 12 months, behind specials about Madeleine McCann (3.8m / 20.1%) and Donald Trump (2.6m / 12.5%).

It was comfortably ahead of C4’s Tigerlily-produced Working with Weinstein, which aired in a Tuesday 10pm slot last week to 850,000 (6.4%).

Opposite, Channel 4’s Married At First Sight hit a series high of 2m (9.9%) as it reached the penultimate episode of its four-part run.

ITV won the slot with Plum Pictures’ Serial Killer with Piers Morgan, a one-off about Kansas City serial killer Lorenzo Gilyard which gripped 2.8m (14.2%).

ITN Productions fast-turnaround special, which was commissioned on Wednesday, peaked with 2m (9.4%) at 9.10pm as viewers flocked to learn more about the Beast From The East.

Across the 120-minutes the show comfortably beat the slot average of 984,000 (5.1%), according to Barb data provided by overnights.tv.

The second episode of the US format was in line with last week’s opener and doubled the 630,000 (3.3%) slot average.

It helped the channel to a strong evening after The Big Bang Theory pulled in 1.3m (5.4%) over the previous 30-minutes.

The Big Bang shows helped propel Lime Pictures’ Celebs Go Dating, which continued across the 9pm hour to a series high of 718,000 (3.6%).

It remained comfortably ahead of the 458,000 (2.3%) who watched ITV2’s Survival Of The Fittest.