12 April 2024 – ITV Drama has its best start to the year for 6 years.

ITV Drama has had its best start to the year for 6 years with the top four performing brand new original dramas in 2024 all coming exclusively from ITV.

In the company’s first quarter (January - March 2024), across both ITVX and linear channels, ITV drama reached 44 million viewers which equates to more than 72% of the UK population.

On ITVX, there have been 273 million streams of drama content which is up by nearly a quarter on this point last year (+24%).

Mr Bates vs the Post Office is ITV's biggest drama since records go back, over 20 years, with an average of 14 million viewers and 24 million streams across the four episode series.

Trigger Point series 2 launched with 8.6m and continues to grow its audience across the six episode series. The second series provided a big boost to the first and the two series together have had over 36m streams. Series 2 is the most streamed drama on ITVX this year, whilst the first series is in fourth place.

After the Flood launched with 8.8m and the series has been streamed 28m times so far across the six episode series. Breathtaking launched with 5.9m and the series has been streamed 7.5m times.

Vera, now in its 13th season, averaged 7.6m and all series have been streamed 15m times on ITVX this year alone.

Polly Hill, Head of Drama ITV said: "It’s been an incredible start to the year, kick started by the phenomenal success of Mr Bates vs the Post Office which continues to make us all proud of the good our drama has achieved in shining a light on this terrible miscarriage of justice. This was soon followed by the success of Breathtaking, which was yet another example of ITV telling a vitally important story about one of our public institutions."