Superb viewing figures for opening episode of new season of Grace

Peter James, author of the Grace novels on which the series is based, described the figures as fantastic.

The series’ exec producer told him Grace season five premiered “with a very healthy 3.009m average rating, a 26.6% share and 3.280 peak” – nearly half a million up on the season four autumn launch last year. Importantly, the numbers held up well and “maintained a very healthy, flat profile across the two hours with only a small drop-off.”

The producer added: “It’s a fantastic start and bodes really well for the 30-day consolidated numbers. The channel is very happy!”

The consolidated numbers will take in viewing on catch-up.

Sunday night’s first episode in season five is the first of four new episodes – and they come just as season six is about to start filming in Brighton. Season five comprises Dead If You Don't, Dead At First Sight, Need You Dead and Find Them Dead, TV episode numbers 13, 14, 15 and 16 in the series – which will be followed by episodes 17-20 next year on ITV. The series stars John Simm (as Detective Superintendent Roy Grace), Richie Campbell (as DS Glenn Branson) and Zoë Tapper (as Cleo Morey).”

Peter is delighted with a new tone in the series: “There's a huge amount of emotion. The books and the television are slightly out of sync with some of the character arcs. So in season five, we're seeing a relationship with Bruno, without saying too much about what then happens. We've got kind of the aftermath of what's happened with Sandy.

“Season five opened with, I think, one of the strongest of the stories, which is a bomb threat at the Brighton & Hove Albion football game. Roy is in the stadium with his son. And that's a really great episode. And I think all four episodes, people are going to really have fun. I think they've been toned also to the mood that we're in right now. Some of the earlier episodes were pretty dark, but I've always, in the Roy Grace novels, tried to put a lot of humour in. And the humour has been, if you like, upped and the darkness just lowered a little bit.

“You don't have to have watched one before. You don't have to have read a Roy Grace novel. You can just watch it as a standalone. But the more you watch, the more you learn. It is almost like a soap opera at one level, in terms of key character arcs, Glenn Branson and his sort of train crash of a kind of marriage. And in Roy Grace, moving from the grief of his missing wife into falling in love again with Cleo, having their first child, then discovering that he's got a child by his first wife that he never knew about. So I've tried always not just to inject humour, but to inject real humanity.”