Downton Abbey wins Christmas Day ratings battle

Christmas Day marks the end of an era, and sees the last ever episode of Downton Abbey air.

But a spokeswoman for production company Carnival Films denied the cast had any part to play in the decision to end Downton after six series, with the final episode airing on Christmas Day.

BBC1 will be hoping to build on its performance previous year when it enjoyed a clean sweep of the five most-watched programmes.

Carter, 67 – who plays Mr Carson in the popular ITV period drama – described the final ever episode as a “tearjerker”.

It feels extraordinary, we remember the first day we were here and now here we are and it feels very, very unusual not to be coming back here. Not everyone gets the happy endings, but ultimately we are a positive show.

An average overnight audience of 8.6 million viewers, including those time-shifting on ITV +1, watched as Matthew Crawley (played by Dan Stevens) proposed to Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) four years ago, according to the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (Barb). “We have a final season that’s as strong as the first because we quit while we were ahead”.

In an interview with Deadline, he said: “We easily could have gone for a seventh season”. The show at present is taking place around 1925, and the last thing that we want to see is to start seeing is an economic downturn on the show.

The ITV Evening News was the most watched News programme with 3.6 million.

However, with no one show breaking the seven million barrier, viewing figures as a whole are down on previous years.

It is a TV show that has captured the imagination of the nation – and one that bowed out in spectacular style with a two-hour special on Christmas Day.

However, ITV’s victory will be overshadowed by the overall decline in people tuning into the main channels over Christmas Day.