War And Peace continues to lose viewers as Call The Midwife dominates Sunday ratings
THE BBC'S high-profile adaptation of War And Peace suffered a dip in ratings once again last night, with a total of 1.2 million viewers lost since its debut.
The first episode, broadcast on January 3, appealed to 6.3 million; diving to 5.3 million the following week.
Last night's episode dumped another 200,000, with the resulting 5.1 million figure representing a 22.3% share of the audience from 9pm.
In the previous hour, Call The Midwife returned for its fifth series and became the most-watched show of the evening with a healthy 7.97 million viewers.
Although down 300,000 on last year's opener, it was enough to dent ITV's Endeavour, which aired at the same time and reached 4.6 million viewers - half a million down on the previous week.
War and Peace's dying horse steals the show
Side-by-side, Call The Midwife captivated 32% of the audience while Endeavour held 19.2%.
Earlier, at 7pm, ITV's Beowulf continued to suffer; dropping another 300,000 on last week's number to serve 2 million fans.
On Channel 4 at 9pm, Deutschland 83 also dropped audience members, slipping below the 1 million mark for the first time.
Its overnight number of 900,000 is down on the 1.1 million who tuned in last week and a far cry from the 1.5 million who were on board the week before.
The Voice UK was another show to struggle over the weekend, shedding 750,000 viewers week-on-week to hit 6.4 million on Saturday night.
That number is more than 2 million lower than the 8.5 million who tuned in to the equivalent episode last year, hinting that the BBC's decision to axe Sir Tom Jones may not have been a wise move after all.
Rita Ora is also absent this year, with the pair replaced by Boy George and Paloma Faith.