The New Year’s Day television schedule was full of treats – with the first episode of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’s Dracula and the new series of Doctor Who standing out as particular highlights.


The ratings are now in for both shows – and at first glance, they’re a little low.

The return of Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor was watched by 4.9 million viewers, a significant drop off from her first appearance as the character in 2017, when the debut episode of series 11 pulled in 8.2 million.

In fact, Who was pipped by Emmerdale as the most watched show of the day – with five million viewers tuning into the ITV soap.

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Dracula suffered similarly underwhelming numbers, with 3.6 million viewers watching the opening episode as it aired – less than half the 7.5 million that tuned in to watch the premiere of Moffat and Gatiss’ Sherlock when it debuted back in the summer of 2010.

Of course, it is likely that both of these numbers will be bolstered significantly when catch-up numbers are added to the equation, and so the figures don’t quite tell the full story just yet.

Moffat and Dracula producer Sue Vertue previously speculated that the show’s scheduling – airing over three nights from 1st-3rd January – might impact its overnight figures.

“I think the overnights might change slightly,” Vertue said. “But we never really pay much attention [to that].

“I don’t know what the result will be,” Moffat said. “People might choose to wait longer [before watching].

“But I think the way we regard television now is not so much ‘I’m watching it while it’s on’, as ‘that’s now been delivered to my hard drive; I’ll watch it in my own time, thank you’. That’s how we think.”


Dracula continues tonight at 9pm on BBC One, with Doctor Who returning on Sunday at 7pm