Downton Abbey continues strong performance for ITV

Downton AbbeyPeriod drama Downton Abbey continued its strong performance for ITV1 last night as it held steady in the ratings and once again out performed spy drama Spooks.

The Julian Fellowes penned drama continues to attract big audiences to ITV1 and prove the Brits love a good, old fashioned period drama. Last night’s second episode of Downton Abbey held steady in the ratings with 9 million viewers at 9pm. However, if ratings from ITV’s timeshift channel are taken into account, it had 416k viewers, then the episode had a combined audience of 9.4 million viewers which means it rated slightly higher than last week’s season opener.

BBC One drama Spooks was once again out performed by Downton Abbey and lost ratings on last week’s season opener. The 10th and final series continued on BBC One last night with 4.1 million viewers compared with 4.6 million for last week’s episode. However, Spooks does pick up big gains via DVR figures so the actual audience level for the episode will likely be higher than overnight ratings suggest.