Doctor Who Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror, was watched by 4.04 million viewers in the UK yesterday according to unofficial overnight figures.

The rating, representing 20.0% of the total viewing audience made Doctor Who the sixth most popular show on British Television yesterday. Doctor Who was beaten by its ITV opposition, Dancing on Ice, which had 4.52 million viewers.

Top for the day was Call the Midwife, with 6.33 million viewers. Countryfile, the lead into Doctor Who, had 5.23 million. The drama The Trial of Christine Keeler had 3.46 million watching. The late News managed 4.38 million viewers, pushing The Doctor into sixth place.

The episode was the 50th highest rated programme for the week on overnight figures.

The overnight figure counts those who watched the show yesterday. Final figures, released next Monday, will include those who recorded the programme and watched it later and are likely to be substantially higher.

The first episode of the new season of Doctor Who, Spyfall, had an official rating of 6.89 million viewers, according to figures released by the Broadcasting Research Audience Board, BARB. The conclusion of the story, shown four days later on BBC One had 6.07 million viewers.

The ratings were considerably higher than the initial overnight figure and makes the two episodes the 4th and 6th most watched on BBC Television for the week and the 8th and 16th across all television.

For Spyfall, Part One 6.70 million watched the episode on a conventional TV set. However the BARB 4-Screen Dashboard shows that an additional 101,000 watched on their PC, 49,000 watched on a Tablet device and 27,000 watched on a smartphone.

For Spyfall, Part Two 5.91 million watched the episode on a conventional TV set with an additional 85,000 watched on their PC, 46,000 watched on a Tablet device and 34,000 watched on a smartphone.

The ratings are down on the opening years of last season but are scoring higher than Series 10

Top for the week was the New Year Fireworks on BBC One getting 10.84 million watching, 2 million down on last year.

Each episode of Skyfall had an Appreciation Index score of 82

Doctor Who Orphan 55, was watched by 4.19 million viewers in the UK yesterday according to unofficial overnight figures.

The rating, representing 20.9% of the total viewing audience made Doctor Who the fifth most popular show on British Television yesterday. Doctor Who was beaten by its ITV opposition, Dancing on Ice, which had 4.51 million viewers.

Top for the day was Call the Midwife, with 6.24 million viewers. Countryfile, the lead into Doctor Who, had 5.13 million. The drama The Trial of Christine Keeler had 3.67 million watching.

The overnight figure counts those who watched the show yesterday. Final figures, released next Monday, will include those who recorded the programme and watched it later and are likely to be substantially higher.

Doctor Who Spyfall Part Two, was watched by 4.6 million viewers in the UK yesterday according to unofficial overnight figures.

The rating, representing 22.6% of the total viewing audience, was disappointing for the series making Doctor Who the fifth most popular show on British Television yesterday. Doctor Who was beaten by its ITV opposition, Dancing on Ice: The Launch, which had 5.14 million viewers.

Top for the day was the return of Call the Midwife, with 6.97 million viewers. Countryfile, the lead into Doctor Who, had 5.04 million. Football also did well with Match of the Day seen by 5.14 million during the afternoon.

With overnight figures for the whole week now available, Doctor Who is the 24th and 28th most watched programme. Top for the week was the New Year Fireworks on BBC One with 10.33 million watching.

The overnight figure counts those who watched the show yesterday. Final figures, released next Monday, will include those who recorded the programme and watched it later and are likely to be substantially higher.

Audience reaction to the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who, Spyfall, is overwhelmingly positive with many reviewers praising the story.

The Mirror said it was an epic start to the new series. "the most exciting thing about the episode is the never-ending twists and turns that quite literally left my jaw hanging open."

Radio Times was equally impressed seeing the story as a vast improvement on the previous series. "Part One races along and is slickly directed by newcomer Jamie Magnus Stone. His grandfather was Magnus Magnusson, the broadcasting legend behind the BBC quiz, Mastermind. A clue hidden in plain sight?"

The Telegraph liked the pace "The episode – the first of a two-parter – zipped along, with Whittaker doing her hyperactive thing and her companions (Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill) given generous amounts of screen time."

Den of Geek loved the plot twists "Spyfall, as you might expect from an episode that’s so gleefully borrowing from 007 and his kin, is a globetrotting adventure that barely ever stands still long enough to catch its breath"

inews compared the episode to the thirteenth Doctor's first season. "Whittaker’s debut series established a Doctor Who that had never looked more slick or cinematic, but Spyfall goes even further, with huge, stylish, lavishly shot set-pieces like a frantic, gun-toting motorbike chase through striking Californian farmland."

The series premiered on New Year's Day on BBC One where it received an Appreciation Index score of 82

Doctor Who Spyfall Part One, was watched by an average of 4.88 million viewers, 21.6% of the total TV audience at the time.

The audience is slightly lower than last year's New Year Special which had an overnight figure of 5.15 million watching.

Doctor Who was the second-highest-rated show for the day with Emmerdale taking top honours with 5 million watching. Coronation Street was third, just behind Doctor Who. The new Steven Moffat series Dracula had 3.57 million watching.

The rating does not include those recording the programme and watching it later. Final ratings will be released in two weeks time which are likely to put Doctor Who as the top-rated show of the day.

After a year off, Doctor Who is back and so are we with our festive Predict the Ratings competition! This year readers have the chance to win a copy of this latest series of adventures featuring the Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan on Blu-ray/DVD upon its release date (currently scheduled for March 2020).


The episode is broadcast in the UK on New Year's Day at 6:55pm on BBC One; ITV will broadcast Doctor Who's 'traditional' competition in the form of Emmerdale from 7:00pm, with BBC Two showing Masterchef: The Professionals Rematch 2019 (also at 7:00pm), Channel 4 halfway through The Lion King (6:00pm), and Channel 5 continuing The Two Ronnies: the Unseen Sketches (from 6:20pm). Last year's BBC prime time premiere was the return of Luther: this year it is the new adaptation of Dracula from the pen of Sherlock and of course Doctor Who writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.

For comparison, last year's New Year's Day special, Resolution, was watched by 7.13 million viewers, and achieved 14th place in the weekly chart. Its 7:00pm timeslot put it up against Emmerdale on ITV, The Snow Wolf: A Winter's Tale on BBC Two, Sister Act on Channel 4 and The Morecambe and Wise Show: Look Back in Laughter on Channel 5. Doctor Who easily won its timeslot, but was narrowly beaten later in the evening by old rival Coronation Street (7.17m), and Luther (9.10m); the annual New Year's Day fireworks exploded their way to the top of the chart with 12.39m.


To enter our competition, please send the following details to comp-ratings@doctorwhonews.net with the subject, "No Doctor, I expect you to ...":

• Your name and preferred email address
• Your country of entry (full details will be requested only if you are the winner)
• Your guess at the final viewing figure to the nearest 10,000 (eg.9.99m)
• Your guess at the final position in the chart (eg. 1st) - this will only be used in the event of a tie-break

Terms and Conditions:

• The competition closes at 08:00 GMT, 2nd January 2020
• Only one entry will be accepted per person.
• The competition is open worldwide
• BARB final figures are expected in early 2020, we will contact the winner once they have been published
• The prize is a copy of The Complete Series Twelve on either DVD or Bluray; we will confirm the format with the winner at time of notification.

Good luck and don't forget to watch the series opener yourself! See our guide for current schedules for the episode locally, and visit This Week in Doctor Who for the continuing adventures of all of the Doctors around the world!

Doctor Who was the fourth most popular show on the BBC iPlayer in 2018, according to figures released by the corporation.

Jodie Whittaker's debut The Woman Who Fell to Earth had nearly four million requests on the online platform.

The most popular show of the year was Bodyguard, with the first episode becoming BBC iPlayer’s biggest ever programme, with 10.8 million requests across the year. All six episodes of the drama appear in iPlayer’s top ten programmes of the year. Hit Killing Eve came a close second with 9.2m requests for episode one, followed by global thriller McMafia, with 4.7m requests.

Overall in 2018 3.6 billion programmes were requested on iPlayer throughout the year.

1	Bodyguard	Episode 1	10,842,000
2	Killing Eve	Nice Face	9,235,000
3	McMafia	Episode 1	4,741,000
4	Doctor Who	The Woman Who Fell to Earth	3,965,000
5	Keeping Faith	Episode 1	3,927,000
6	The Cry	Episode 1	3,496,000
7	Dynasties	Chimpanzee	3,447,000
8	Our Girl	Nigeria, Belize & Bangladesh Tours - Episode 1	3,422,000
9	Bing	Show	3,177,000
10	MOTD Live	Sweden v England	3,153,000

Doctor Who: Resolution had an official rating of 7.13 million viewers, according to figures released by the Broadcasting Research Audience Board, BARB.

6.95 million watched the episode on a conventional TV set. However the BARB 4-Screen Dashboard shows that an additional 73,000 watched on their PC, 54,000 watched on a Tablet device and 44,000 watched on a smartphone These figures make Doctor Who the 14th most watched programme of the week ending 6th January.

Top for the week was the New Year Fireworks on BBC One getting 12.27 million watching.

The final rating is the lowest consolidated rating for a Christmas/New Year special since the series returned in 2005.

Resolution had an Appreciation Index score of 80

Doctor Who: Resolution was watched by 5.15 million viewers, a share of 22.4% of the total TV audience, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The rating makes Doctor Who the fourth highest rated programme for New Year's Day. Top was the BBC One Drama Luther with 5.63 million watching. On ITV two programmes edged above the Doctor, Coronation Street had 5.39 million watching, while Emmerdale had 5.17 million. EastEnders had 4.74 million viewers and the Mrs Brown's Boys New Year Special had 5.06 million watching.

The return of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? had 3.39 million viewers, but was beaten by Bradley Walsh in The Chase with 3.86 million.

Final figures should be available next week, which will include those who recorded the programme and watched it later.