Final 'Pushing Daisies' seen by 860,000

The final episode of Pushing Daisies was seen by just 860k (6.5%) on ITV1 on Friday, early figures suggest.

The series, which starred British actress Anna Friel as the female lead, was axed by ABC after two seasons last year. The final three episodes premiered on ITV1 and are still to air in the US.

The series had begun strongly for ITV1 last year, with 5.95m (25.7%) tuning in for the premiere in a Saturday night slot. When the show returned for its second season at the end of January, the audience dropped to 1.74m (9.4%) and slowly declined thereafter.

Earlier, ITV1's new comedy drama series Boy Meets Girl, starring Martin Freeman and Paterson Joseph, made an unspectacular start with 3.43m (15.7%) in the 9pm hour.

On BBC One, Have I Got News For You had 5.03m (22.7%) in the first half of the hour, then the second episode of Martin Clunes comedy Reggie Perrin put in 4.21m (19.5%).

Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA drew 2.11m (9.6%) for Channel 4, with a further 280k (1.7%) on Channel 4+1, and Five's NCIS appealed to 2.19m (10%).

BBC Two was last for the hour with English Heritage, which interested 1.52m (6.9%). The channel's preceding coverage of the first World Snooker semi-final averaged 1.35m (7%) between 7pm and 9pm.

A Place In The Sun: Home Or Away logged 1.47m (7.2%) for Channel 4 in the 8pm hour, while 894k (4.4%) opted for Five's Police Interceptors: Special Edition.

A Tonight investigation into how the recession is affecting celebrity chefs took 3.07m (15.5%) for ITV1 at 8pm, then half an hour later, a Total Wipeout clip show put in 2.48m (11.7%) for BBC One.

ITV1 and BBC One ran a close race in primetime, but overall the former outpipped its rival with an average share of 22.6% to 22.5%. Channel 4 was third with 6.8% (+1: 0.8%), followed by BBC Two with 6.7% and Five with 5.8%.

A screening of X-Men: The Last Stand pulled in the largest multichannel audience of the day, with 603k (3.4%) tuning in to Film4 from 9pm.

Also popular in multichannel homes were Poirot, seen by 461k (2.5%) on ITV3 from 7.55pm, and a rerun of Katie & Peter: Stateside, which managed 424k (2.7%) for ITV2 in the 10pm hour.

Ratings data supplied by Attentional