The Call Centre rings up 1m viewers

The in-house series, set in a Swansea call centre run by Nev Wilshire, almost doubled BBC3’s slot average of 683k (2.86%) for the past 12 months.

It was the best factual series launch on the channel since Kids Behind Bars, which debuted with 1.1m (4.98%) in June 2011.

The Call Centre held its audience well over the period it was on air, but did lose viewers in its final five minutes, when its ratings dived to 851k (4.07%).

The all-star Left Bank Pictures drama returned for a third series with an audience that was 40% down on last year’s opener, which secured an audience of 857k (3.5%).

The show was still more than four times Sky 1’s slot average of 121k (0.51%) for the past year, according to overnight Barb figures supplied by Attentional.

Over in the terrestrial channel world, BBC1’s district nurse drama was the highest-rated effort on Tuesday night. It pipped last week’s audience of 3.91m (18.29%).

The latest episode of C4’s medical franchise was next in line.

The US drama beat ITV’s doc.

A two-part follow up from last year’s series did not perform well for ITV. It was less than half the channel’s slot average of 3.98m (16.66%).

The series continued with its second biggest audience of the run. It could not prevent it from finishing as the lowest-rated terrestrial show at 9pm.