Doctor Who "A Good Man Goes To War" Overnight Ratings

Mid-series finale draws back the viewers

The overnight ratings for Doctor Who ’s "A Good Man Goes To War” provide a field day for anyone who believes you can prove anything with statistics.

First, the great news: the figure was 5.5 million tuning in to see the episode live. That’s half a million up on last week, and a fantastic result when you consider the competition Who was up against (the final of Britain’s Got Viewers Who’ll Watch Any Old Shite and some football or other) – many fans were bracing themselves for another drop. So, excellent news.

On the other hand, Doctor Who was only the sixth most popular show of the night, down from its usual second, but that’s partly because ITV1 cheated and put out two editions of Britain’s Got Talent . The BGT effect also provided a boost for ITV1’s surrounding shows – Pop Star To Opera Star and the 10pm news bulletin – while the football also scraped into the top five.

Being placed against strong opposition also affected Who ’s audience share – just 25.4%.

But, of course, all these figure are meaningless until we get the adjusted figures in a week’s time, which always see massive improvements in figures for Who . But hey, it’s still nice to know that the show is starting from a higher base line! And with an episode that good, we expect mammoth iPlayer figures as well as word of mouth gets round.