Dickens seduces 1.5m

Channel 4 continued its Victorian Passions season at 9pm last night as Dickens's Secret Lover charmed a modest 1.5m viewers (6.5%).

The hour-long docudrama, starring Charles Dance as the famous author, held a largely steady audience throughout but hit a high of 1.6m (7.3%) in the final 15 minutes.

The show attracted just 49,000 when it was shown at 10pm on C4+1.

Dickens's Secret Lover found favour with upmarket viewers as nearly half - 49.6% - of the audience were ABC1 viewers. The programme also attracted generally older viewers with the weighted average age being 61. Just 9.1% of the audience were aged between 16 and 34.

The programme was in line with last week's The Victorian Sex Explorer, which was part of the same season when it picked up 1.5m (7.1%) in the same slot.

Last night's show had a problem hitting the channel's slot average for last year of 1.7m (7.2%) and was even further behind the performance this year of 2m (8.4%).

The C4 show managed a narrow victory over Five's factual series Warship which recruited 1.4m (6.4%) in the same slot. The second outing for Mary, Queen of Shops at 9pm interested 2.5m (11%), also at 9pm.

Neither ITV1 nor BBC1 had too much to crow about at 9pm either.

ITV1's documentary My Child Won't Eat picked up 4.2m (18.7%). The one-off programme was off the pace of the channel's slot average for this year of 4.6m (19.4%) and some way behind the performance for last year of 5.7m (24.4%).

BBC1 also failed to hit the 5m mark too. The entire coverage of Austria's Euro 2008 match against Germany interested 4.6m (21.3%) between 7.30pm and 10pm. So far this year the corporation's main channel has averaged 5.5m (23.1%) at that time.

Between 9pm and 10pm the channel averaged 4.9m (21.7%).

Earlier in the evening at 8pm BBC2 cashed in on the popularity of Springwatch with a spin-off show Springwatch Sealife picking up 2.2m (10.1%).

Both C4 and Five failed to make the grade.

C4's Dispatches: From Jail to Jihad enlisted just 547,000 (2.5%) with an extra 69,000 on C4+1. Five's The Gadget Show drew 878,000 (3.9%) also at 8pm.

ITV1 claimed the most watched programme of the day with an hour long Coronation Street special at 8pm picking up 8.1m (36.3%).

Week-on-week C4's Big Brother was down by 600,000 viewers. Last night's show interested 2.6m (14.9%) over an hour at 10pm with an additional 120,000 watching on C4+1. The previous Monday's edition (9 June) gained 3.2m (17.9%) with 143,000 watching on C4+1.

All hours shares for Monday 16 June 2008: BBC1 – 21.2%, ITV1 – 20.7%, C4 – 8.1% (C4+1 – 0.5%), BBC2 – 7.9%, Five – 4.6%, multichannel – 36.9%.

Peaktime (6pm to 10.30pm) shares: ITV1 – 25.1%, BBC1 – 23%, BBC2 – 9.4%, C4 – 6.4% (C4+1 – 0.5%), Five – 4.3%, multichannel – 31.4%.

Source: Broadcast Now