The BBC has declared Peter Capaldi’s debut series of Doctor Who a triumph in the UK and across the world.

Press release follows:

Series 8 saw Peter Capaldi take up the iconic role of The Doctor, with an average consolidated audience of 7.4m viewers every week in the UK.

This an increase of 39% on the overnight figures reported the day after broadcast. This includes the 9.2m average audience that watched Deep Breath, Peter Capaldi’s debut episode, which is the highest figure for a non-special episode (Christmas/50th anniversary) since the opening episode of series 5 (Matt Smith’s debut) in 2010. These figures show how Doctor Who has consistently achieved big audiences across the last three series – series 7a/7b combined had an average consolidated audience of 7.4m, series 6a/6b attracted 7.5m and series 5 was viewed by 7.3m.

There has been over 18.9m requests to watch Doctor Who series 8 on BBC iPlayer – an average of 1.6m requests for each of the 12 episodes.

In the US, consolidated figures for the first 10 episodes have seen Series 8 experience a 23% uplift in total audience in Live+7 on Series 7. The series 8 premiere was the show’s highest-rated series premiere ever on BBC America, and is the first BBC Worldwide series ever to simultaneously hold the #1 slot in the Main TV Season Charts across all major Electronic Sell-through platforms in the US within 48 hours of episode 1’s release on August 24th 2014. In Canada, on the Space channel, the first 10 episodes of Series 8 have seen a 22% uplift in consolidated audience size on Series 7.

Steven Moffat, lead writer and executive producer said: “We never take it for granted, but the miracle has happened again – the nation has taken a brand new Doctor to its heart.”

Danny Cohen, Director of BBC Television added: “It’s been an outstanding debut series for Peter Capaldi as Doctor Who and I’m very grateful to Peter, Steven Moffat and everyone involved.”

Doctor Who Extra, which offers viewers a behind the scenes look at making one of the nation’s best loved dramas has had 1.3m BBC iPlayer requests and reached 2.4m people on BBC Red Button to date.