Doctor Who: Flux "The Halloween Apocalypse" | Overnight Ratings

Doctor Who returned to our screens on Halloween night and speculation over the ratings was at its peak. What with the celebrations ongoing, and the early timeslot, it was an ongoing mystery as to what the final figures may have been.

The unofficial overnight viewing figures have been revealed. 'The Halloween Apocalypse' had an average viewership of 4.43 million. The episode also managed to garner an audience share of 26.9% and a peak viewership of 5.41 million within the last five minutes. Doctor Who was the 2nd most-watched show of the night, behind Strictly Come Dancing which had 7.96 million watching (42.9%). 

Let's look a bit further into it. On Sunday, Doctor Who's lead in was Countryfile. The relaxing nature show just lost out to The Doctor with 4.27 million watching; the share was higher however at 29.0%. Other Sunday night dramas also couldn't quite match up. Showtrial premiered on BBC One at 9PM to an audience of 3.51 million, some people keying it as Vigil's replacement (although Suranne Jones' submarine thriller performed considerably stronger). ITV dramas The Larkins and Angela Black each achieved 3.82m and 2.97m, respectively. 

Doctor Who became the most-watched drama of the week according to overnight data, however this could always alter once official figures are released. With timeshifted ratings, Doctor Who could see a rise of 1.5-2.2m (based on previous figures) which could take it to a maximum figure of around 6.6 million, but time will tell. In today's TV climate, this is a very healthy audience for a TV drama. We expect 28-day data to show a better picture since 'Flux' is a serialised drama. The show could end up around the 7m mark. 

In comparison to previous series, this is the lowest overnight figure since the show returned in 2005. However, with the ever-growing use of on-demand viewing and online platforms, overnight ratings are slowly becoming more obsolete. Having said that, let's look back. The Series 12 opener 'Spyfall: Part 1' had 4.88m watching (up 0.45m), but the share was considerably lower at 21.6% (down 5.3% on this year's opener). The share was also higher than every episode of Series 12, 9, 10, and almost every episode of Series 8 too (not including festive specials) which is pretty impressive. 

Back to the figure itself, it is down on the last episode 'Revolution of the Daleks' by only 0.26m meaning the show held on to around 94.5% of its audience from early 2021, and 90.8% from early 2020. Many shows this year witnessed a considerable drop, this includes The Great British Bake Off, Silent Witness, and a few others, so it was expected that Doctor Who could follow suit, but it seems to have held its own quite well. Although the figure is lower, and could be better in the grand scheme of things, it is still a pretty healthy place to be for a show that is almost 60 years old. It'll be interesting to see how episode 2 performs with the change in delivery, and the lack of Halloween celebrations?!

Official figures should be revealed on the 8th November. 

.

P.S. Many thanks to Broadcast Magazine & Lizo Mzimba (Twitter).