BBC's Call The Midwife has trounced Downton Abbey in the Christmas Day battle of the period dramas.
The two shows were neck and neck on 7.3 million viewers when overnight figures were issued last week, but "consolidated" figures – which include catch-up viewing – show the BBC1 drama ahead by half a million viewers.
It drew 10.15 million viewers for its December 25 special, while ITV1's Downton had 9.6 million, including viewers watching later on the ITV+1 channel.
Downton was the big winner based on consolidated figures a year ago, which meant that, after time-shift viewing was included, it was the biggest Christmas Day show.
However, its seasonal edition screened last week – in which Dan Stevens' character Matthew Crawley was killed off – was the sixth most popular show of Christmas Day.
EastEnders retained its position as the most popular show of December, while Midwife was second.
The Royle Family festive comedy pulled in 9.87 million, making it the third most popular show of the day. Doctor Who was fourth with an audience share of 9.85 million; Coronation Street fifth; Emmerdale eight; and the Queen's Speech at ninth, attracting 6.46 million viewers.
The BBC News was the 10th most watched show of the day, on 6.14 million viewers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article