TOP OF THE COPS
Line of Duty was most watched TV programme last year in Scotland
IT was a television drama that held the nation firmly in its grip as investigators risked their lives to stamp out police corruption.
And now it has emerged that Line of Duty, starring Scots actor Martin Compston, was the most watched programme in Scotland last year.
A total of 1,201,000 viewers watched the final episode of the fifth series, which was shown on BBC One last May.
The figures mean the police drama took comedy Still Game’s title as the most popular provey gramme in the country.
But Scots shows still featured heavily in TV regulator Ofcom’s figures, with Only An Excuse?, detective series Shetland and festive favourite Hogmanay all beating the soaps into the top positions.
The Line Of Duty episode that took the top spot was the 90minute season finale. The thrilling conclusion of the series saw Superintendent Ted Hastings – played by Adrian Dunbar and who leads the fictitious anti-corruption unit AC-12 – being subjected to a lengthy grilling as detectives tried to identify a mysterious rogue police officer known only as H.
It beat the Christmas Day special episode of Gavin and Stacey, which was the second most watched programme in Scotland with 1,111,000 people tuning in for some festive fun.
The final of Strictly Come Dancing took third spot with 1,042,000 viewers, while the first episode of the final series of Still Game was fourth with a tally of 1,033,000.
In 2018 Still Game, the Scottish-produced sitcom about pensioners Jack and Victor, written by and starring Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill, was the most watched programme, with 1,373,000 people tuning in to episode two of the eighth series.
A statement from Ofcom said: ‘Daily viewing of broadcast television in Scotland fell again in 2019 but remains the largest component of TV set viewing at an average of three hours 22 minutes a day. While the amount of time spent watching other content such as subscription video on demand services has increased... it is still modest by comparison. Significant numbers still tune in for blockbuster television series, with the top four mostwatched programmes in Scotland last year attracting more than a million viewers. Elsewhere, Ofcom’s News Consumption Surresearch underlines the importance of public service broadcasting, with BBC One and STV remaining the two most popular TV news sources in Scotland.’
Other favourites on the list included football sketch show Only An Excuse, a long-time popular choice in Scotland, which was in fifth place with viewing figures of 991,000, and the BBC Hogmanay show, which was ninth after 838,000 people tuned in.
The figures showed only one soap made the top 10 most popular shows north of the Border, with 831,000 viewers watching an episode of Coronation Street in January 2019.
The Ofcom data showed STV News at Six attracted a 30.2 per cent share of the audience in Scotland in 2019, beating its BBC rival Reporting Scotland, which had a lower share at 27.7 per cent.
The three hours 22 minutes per day Scots spent watching broadcast TV last year was the most of any nation in the UK.
But this was an 11-minute decline from three hours 33 minutes in 2018 and more than an hour less than at the start of the decade. BBC anti-racism guide
‘On-demand services up’