'Big Brother' helps C4 to Thursday win

Big Brother notched up its second Thursday night ratings win in a row last night, according to early figures.

The latest update drew a solid 3.11m (14.8%) for Channel 4 in the 9pm hour, putting the channel ahead of all rivals. A further 330,000 watched on timeshift service Channel 4+1 at 10pm. ITV1's medical drama Harley Street dropped more than 100,000 viewers to average just 2.99m (14.3%) at the same time, and BBC One fared even worse with 2.88m (13.7%) for documentary Vanessa Mae: The Making Of Me. Five put in 1.55m (7.4%) with The Hotel Inspector, while on BBC Two, comedies Mock The Week and Lab Rats had 2.69m (12.8%) and 1.4m (6.7%) respectively.

An hour-long edition of EastEnders averaged a sizeable 7.59m (38.9%) for BBC One from 7.30pm, eating into the audience of ITV1's cop drama The Bill, which was down from 4.59m (22.5%) to 3.64m (17.9%) in the 8pm hour. The second episode of Rogue Restaurants had 4.21m (20.4%) for BBC One in the 30 minutes from 8.30pm, a week-on-week fall of almost 800,000. ITV1's top-performing programme of the day was Emmerdale, with 6.02m (34.4%) from 7pm.

On Channel 4 at 8pm, Gok's Fashion Fix maintained 1.82m (9%) but fell slightly behind BBC Two's Natural World special. The programme, about a loggerhead turtle's journey across the Pacific, interested 2m (9.9%) over 50 minutes.

The Charlotte Church Show drew 1.56m (8.9%) to Channel 4 over 45 minutes from 10pm, comfortably topping the 1.26m (6.8%) for BBC Two's Never Mind The Buzzcocks repeat, as well as the 658,000 (4%) audience for Grey's Anatomy on Five.

ITV2 enjoyed a strong primetime performance thanks to its showing of Mission: Impossible 2. The Tom Cruise action film averaged 568,000 (3.7%) between 9pm and 11.20pm to keep the channel ahead of its multichannel rivals.

BBC Three claimed the top-rated multichannel show of the day, however, with an audience of 648,000 (4.5%) for its EastEnders repeat at 10pm. Late peak Family Guy continued to rate well for the channel, with 474,000 and a mighty 8.8% multichannel share for an episode shown at 11.55pm.

E4's biggest draw was 571,000 (3.8%) for first-look Hollyoaks at 7pm, while Sky One had a peak of 323,000 (2%) for its 7.30pm visit to The Simpsons.