Slow start for Sky Atlantic's The Young Pope

The first two episodes of Wildside’s epic 10-part drama created by Paolo Sorrentino and starring Jude Law tripled the channel’s 46,000 (0.3%) slot average for the past 12 months but could not touch the launch of acquisition Westworld which picked up 460,000 (2.5%) earlier this month.

It was also unable to compete with Atlantic’s previous original The Last Panthers which kicked off with 231,000 (1.1%) in November 2015.

Over the same two-hour slot on W, North One Television’s stripped format Celebrity Haunted Hotel Live spooked 147,000 (0.8%), peaking with 217,000 (1.3%) at 10.04pm.

The show was well up on the channel’s slot average of 66,000 (0.4%).

Shine TV’s surveillance format tracked down a series average of 1.4m (6.4%) across its six-part run. It could not match the first series average of 2.2m (9.2%) and also struggled to match the 1.5m (7.3%) slot average.

Hunted narrowly beat C5’s The Nightmare Neighbour Next Door which picked up 1.2m (5.4%) across the hour.

Both went head to head with Red Production Company’s ITV drama Paranoid which was watched by 2.3m (10.7%), in line with the series average but below the 3.2m (15.8%) slot average.

It narrowly beat the penultimate episode of The Fall on BBC2 which picked up 2.1m (9.7%).

The series is currently averaging 2m (9.7%) with one episode to go, according to Barb data supplied by overnights.tv.

BBC1’s The Apprentice won the 9pm slot with 5.6m (27.3%), rising above last week’s 5.3m (24.5%) and beating the channel’s 4m (19.4%) slot average.

The final instalment of Baby Cow’s three-part fantasy comedy executive produced by Steve Coogan fell to a series low.

It picked up an average of 287,000 (1.5%) across its run, just shy of the channel’s 294,000 (1.6%) slot average.