TOM SPILSBURY
The Peter Capaldi era of Doctor Who went out on a high note, with Twice Upon a Time achieving an official BARB rating of7.92 million viewers – Doctor Who’s best viewing figure for exactly three years, when Last Christmas reached 8.28 million in 2014. It was also the third highest rating of the entire Capaldi era, with Deep Breath remaining the benchmark, at 9.17 million. Doctor Who was part of a strong Christmas Day line-up for BBC One, with four other shows on the day itself managing to do even better (see chart), along with a couple of Coronation Street episodes from later in the week, and the 15-minute New Year firework display, which beat everything. However, for the third time in the last four years, no Christmas Day programme could quite make it to 10 million viewers. BBC One’s Call the Midwife came the closest with 9.57 million – its best Christmas Day rating since its debut in 2012. Indeed, although Christmas Day ratings aren’t quite what they were a decade ago – when Voyage of the Damned achieved Doctor Who’s 21st-century high of 13.31 million – there are still a fair few reasons to be cheerful. Doctor Who, Call the Midwife, Mrs Brown’s Boys and EastEnders all managed to improve on their figures of exactly 12 months earlier, with the Doctor managing this feat for the second year in a row. The main competition for Twice Upon a Time was, as in 2016, ITV’s Emmerdale – but the soap opera struggled against the regeneration episode, bringing in 5.12 million, compared to the 6.21 million it achieved against The Return of Doctor Mysterio (which had 7.83 million).