Merlin pulls in nearly 6 million viewers

The latest episode of Merlin, His Father’s Son, pulled in nearly 6 million viewers for BBC One last night while Strictly Come Dancing overtook the X Factor.

It was a good night for BBC One last night as Merlin and Strictly Come Dancing both increased their ratings on last week. The latest episode of the fantasy drama, His Father’s Son, had 5.9 million viewers. The episode guest starred Lindsay Duncan and had around 400,000 viewers more than last week – but the figure will rise even more when consolidated ratings are taken into account.

Meanwhile Strictly Come Dancing overtook the X Factor in the ratings battle – so they’ll be plenty of fresh tabloid stories about how the ITV reality contest is supposedly in “crisis”. Overnight figures reveal that an average of 10.2 million viewers tuned in to Strictly compared to 9.9 million viewers for the X Factor – however, the peak audiences for the X Factor is likely to be higher than that.