'Beauty Queen at 11' shines on BBC Three

A documentary on the controversial story of "pre-teen beauty queen" Sasha Bennington earned an impressive audience for BBC Three last night.

Sasha: Beauty Queen at 11 looked at the youngster's efforts to win a pre-teen pageant competition in Dallas, Texas, and the role of her pushy mother Jayne Harris.

The one-off show drew 625,000 (3.1%) between 9pm and 10pm - well up on the channel's 483,000 (2.34%) average for the slot, and approaching the biggest multichannel audience of the day, which was 640,000 for BBC Three's 10pm EastEnders repeat.

The closest digital-only competition at the time was some way off - Dave's Never Mind Buzzcocks repeat interesting 341,000 and movie In Her Shoes drawing 302,000 (1.94%) to Film4.

Overall, BBC One led the ratings by some way at 9pm, with the second instalment of the current New Tricks series watched by 8.1m (36%).

The figure was down 600,000 on last week's opener, but more than double ITV1's audience of 3.8m (16.8%) for Police, Camera, Action! in the slot.

On BBC Two, the final episode of retail show Mary, Queen Of Shops drew 1.7m (7.7%), while Banged Up, Five's David Blunkett-backed reality show, struggled on 885,000 (3.9%).

Channel 4 aired The Qur'an, a two-hour documentary by award-winning filmmaker Antony Thomas, from 8pm to 10pm, bringing in 1m (4.7%), then attracted 2.6m (15.2%) for Big Brother until 11pm.

> Discuss Sasha: Beauty Queen at 11 on the Digital Spy forums