Sherlock draws 9 million

More than nine million people tuned in to Sunday night’s episode of Sherlock to see the master detective come back to life after a seemingly fatal fall in the last series.

By The Newsroom

Published 3rd Jan 2014, 00:01 BST

Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes.

The show pulled in an average audience of 9.2 million with 9.7 million tuning in at the peak.

That puts it just behind the Christmas Day episode of Mrs Brown’s Boys – the bawdy show created by Irish comic Brendan O’Carroll – which pulled in an average audience of 9.4 million making it the most watched show of the festive season.

Even a mini preview episode of the show, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin  Freeman as the detective and his sidekick Doctor Watson,  was watched by more than 1.5 million people after it was released via the red button and iPlayer.