Monday ratings: Poirot slaughtered by New Tricks

A repeat of Poirot on ITV1 performed dismally for the broadcaster and was beaten by New Tricks in the 9pm hour and Celebrity Big Brother on Channel Five in the 10pm slot.

Poirot: The Third Girl, starring David Suchet as the Belgian detective and Zoe Wanamaker as novelist Ariadne Oliver, was originally broadcast on ITV in 2008. At 9pm on Monday evening the episode was repeated but couldn’t match New Tricks on BBC One at 9pm. Poirot had just 1.9 million viewers across its 90 minutes slot compared with 8 million for New Tricks. At 10pm the adaptation was beaten by Celebrity Big Brother on Channel Five, which continues to perform well for the broadcaster, with 2.1 million viewers.

Elsewhere last night Stephen Fry’s 100 Greatest Gadgets pulled in a modest 1.9 million viewers for Channel Four between 8pm and 11pm. If figures from C4’s time-shift are added it pushes ratings to over 2 million viewers. BBC Two’s best audience of the evening was for University Challenge at 8pm which had 2.7 million viewers while The Conspiracy Files also performed well with 2.2 million viewers.