Down on last week, but still impressive
Merlin ’s “A Herald Of The New Age” achieved 5.66 million viewers on overnight viewing figures, a fall from last week’s series high of 6.01 million. Which is a bit of a shame, because after such a brilliant episode as “Lancelot Du Lac” you would have hoped good word of mouth would have seen a rise.
Also, while this series has generally been doing slightly better in the ratings than the last series so far, it was with the equivalent episode last year (episode 10: “Queen Of Hearts”) that Merlin started to really pick up in the ratings. But it looks like “Herald…” won’t be able to top the final consolidated figure of “Queen Of Hearts”. That managed 7.37 million (and the final consolidated figures remained well above 7 million for the rest of the third series), while this year, Merlin has been averaging time shifts of around 1.3-1.5 million. So unless that trend changes massively, “Herald…” will probably end up with around 7 million viewers. But hey we’d love to be proved wrong!
Whatever way you look at it, though, it’s still a great figure for a drama these days. All Casualty could achieve last night was 3.84 million.
Merlin was, predictably, fourth for the night after the three vote-athaons ( Strictly , The X-Factor , I’m a Celebrity ).
