Football, Maddie dent 'The Apprentice'

Ratings for BBC One favourite The Apprentice took a hit from Champions League football and an ITV1 documentary on Madeleine McCann last night.

The business-based reality show drew 6.8m, or 27% of the viewing audience, at 9pm. Though it still won the slot, The Apprentice was down 600,000 viewers on the previous episode, following five successive weeks of growth.

ITV1 normally airs The Bill at the time but last night had one-off documentary Madeleine, One Year On: Campaign for Change. The programme was watched by 3.5m (14.4%), trailing the channel's 5.2m (22.7%) slot average from last year.

Sky Sports 2 also presented tougher competition than usual with the semi-final second leg between Chelsea and Liverpool. The coverage, shown between 7pm and 10.15pm, interested 2.8m (14%) while 3.3m watched during the match itself. Sky said the game was its fifth most-watched ever.

On Channel 4 from 9pm, Embarrassing Bodies attracted 2.6m (10.1%), while Five's Escape from Alcatraz - part of the channel's True Story strand - reached 1.2m (4.8%). Dan Cruikshank's Adventures in Architecture was watched by 1.7m (6.6%) on BBC Two.