It was a busy old week in TV land over the weekend, as two reality heavyweights went head-to-head, ITV2 launched a sexy new teen drama, Merlin returned to BBC One, Doc Martin returned to ITV1 and Channel 4's Peep Show began its thirtieth sixth series. But which shows flourished in the ratings, and which were merely adequate performers? Read on for Tube Talk's analysis!

Strictly Come Dancing (BBC One)
Together with a controversial new judge, Strictly returned for its seventh series on Friday night, averaging 8.44m (35.7%) for BBC One between 8.30pm and 10pm. The programme ranked as the most-watched show of the day on any channel, and even knocked down the ratings for ITV1's Corrie to 6.59m (28.3%).

Traditionally the programme launches on a Saturday night, but for the first fortnight of this series the show is going out on Fridays and Saturdays.

The move paid off, as launch show ratings were up a massive 40% year-on-year: series six opened to 6.03m (32.8%) over an hour from 6.30pm on Saturday, September 13.

The weekend's second episode was a less impressive affair, however. On Saturday Strictly averaged 7.72m (32.9%) between 7.25pm and 9.05pm, a day-on-day fall of around one in ten viewers. The audience was down because of a much-debated scheduling clash with The X Factor...

The X Factor (ITV1)
... and indeed, the audience for the Simon Cowell reality contest was down to its lowest level this series so far. Saturday's episode averaged 9.27m (38%) between 8pm and 9.15pm, a week-on-week fall of around 1 million viewers.

A second episode - the final auditions episode of this series - went out last night between 7.45pm and 9pm, drawing a much-improved 10.52m (41.4%).

Series to date, The X Factor has averaged 10.25m, up from the equivalent figure for 2008 of 9.25m.

Merlin (BBC One)
Also on Saturday, family drama Merlin returned for its second series, airing in a pre-Strictly slot at 6.40pm. It went on to average 5.08m (27%) over 45 minutes, the show's second lowest audience to date. It did beat ITV1's The Cube, however, and was comfortably in range of the series one average of 5.74m (25.4%).

Peep Show (Channel 4)
Ratings never seem to matter for this quirky comedy, which began its sixth series on Friday (a seventh series has already been commissioned, by the way). The audience has consistently hovered around the 1 million mark, but as David Mitchell's Mark would probably note, it's not always desirable to be the hare in the race for ratings.

Airing at Channel 4 at 10pm, the sixth series opener grabbed a record 1.81m (9.2%), with a further 208k watching on Channel 4+1.

Doc Martin (ITV1)
After an absence of almost two years, Martin Clunes returned for a new series of Doc Martin in the 9pm hour on ITV1 last night. A not insignificant 7.67m (30.4%) tuned in, an increase on the 7.45m (31.5%) who watched the previous series' opener on Monday, September 24, 2007.

During the course of the last series, however, the audience rose sharply over its seven-week run, ending with an impressive 9.8m (40.1%) on November 5, 2007.

Trinity (ITV2)
This sexy new teen drama, starring Charles Dance and Christian 'Echo Beach/Demons' Cooke, launched on ITV2 in the 10pm hour last night with an encouraging 596k (3.8%).

As comparisons, Secret Diary Of A Call Girl launched on the channel to 1.92m (11.8%) on September 27, 2007, while the ill-fated remake of Bionic Woman pulled in 2.18m (10.5%) on March 11, 2008.

What did you make of the weekend's TV ratings? Any surprises? Did Merlin deserve to do better? Add your comments to this entry below!