Mary Queen of Shops ends well, Identity drops

The last edition of Mary Portas’ BBC Two series Mary Queen of Shops ended well last night while BBC One thriller series The Silence kicked off with nearly 5 million viewers. However, ITV1’s new police drama Identity took a big knock in the ratings as it dropped nearly 2 million viewers.

 

The last episode of BBC Two’s popular series Mary Queen of Shops ended well last night according to overnight figures. The series is fronted by Mary Portas who, with her forthright and blunt opinions, does her best to turn around the flagging fortunes of boutiques and has run so far for four seasons on BBC Two. However, last night’s edition of Mary Queen of Shops will be the last because of Portas defection to Channel Four. According to overnight ratings the finale was seen by 2.7 million – down slightly on the average 2.8 million who have watched the fourth series so far. On Channel Four at the same time, 9pm, was a documentary on Concorde which was seen by 2.1 million viewers.

 

Drama wise it was BBC One’s new four-part thriller The Silence which came off better. The first episode of the series, which stars Hugh Bonneville, Gina McKee and Douglas Henshall, had 4.7 million viewers on BBC One with a further 150,000 watching via the BBC HD Channel. On ITV1 at the same time was the second episode of new crime drama Identity with stars Keeley Hawes and Aidan Gillen tumbled down the ratings last night. The series opened well last week with 5.7 million viewers but last nights episode dropped down to 3.9 million, a drop of nearly 2 million viewers. Elsewhere new BBC Two comedy series Rev had 1.6 million viewers.