Whitechapel returns to 6 million viewers

WhitechapelDark, gritty detective drama Whitechapel returned to ITV1 on Monday evening with over 6 million viewers.

The third series of the drama (which stars Rupert Penry-Jones, Phil Davis and Steve Pemberton) has a slightly different format to previous instalments. The first two seasons revolved around “copy-cat” scenarios while the third is made up of three two-part stories. Overnight ratings reveal that the opening instalment of Whitechapel‘s new series had 6.2 million viewers.

BBC One‘s comedy line-up had mixed results; David Jason comedy The Royal Bodyguard bowed out with 2.8 million viewers. It had an impressive launch on Boxing Day with an overnight rating of 7 million viewers and a final figure of 8.2 million viewers. That means by the series close it had lost nearly 6 million viewers. Meanwhile Irish comedy Mrs Brown’s Boys continued to perform strongly for BBC One with 5.4 million viewers.