Christmas Day TV ratings: King's speech leads as BBC dominates with Strictly Come Dancing and Doctor Who

Viewing figures have been released for Christmas Day 2023, with The King's second annual Christmas Day speech ranking first in the ratings.

The monarch pulled in an average of 5.9 million viewers on BBC One, the highest of the day on UK television. His speech reflected on an "increasingly tragic conflict around the world", with a backdrop of war between Ukraine and Russia and Irsael and Hamas.

While the speech triumphed in the 2023 Christmas Day ratings, it was actually significantly down from last year's speech. The 2022 speech, the first ever given by the then-newly crowned King Charles after the death of Queen Elizabeth, was watched by a total of 8.1 million viewers.

Elsewhere, the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special was watched by an average of 5.3 million people. Eastenders star Jamie Borthwick and partner Nancy Xu lifted the festive title on the night.

The highly-anticipated Doctor Who Christmas special drew in 4.7 million viewers. The episode was the first to star Ncuti Gatwa as The 15th Doctor in his own solo story after his appearance alongside David Tennant in the 60th anniversary special earlier this month.

The BBC dominated on the day with nine out of ten of the most viewed shows and films coming from the broadcaster. The only non-BBC offering came from ITV, with The 1% Club special drawing in 3.4 million viewers.

The top 10 included:

1. The King - 5.9m
2. Strictly Come Dancing - 5.3m
3. Doctor Who - 4.7m
4. = Ghosts - 4.4m
5. = Call The Midwife - 4.4m
6. Michael MacIntryre's Christmas Wheel - 4.2m
7. Eastenders - 3.6m
8. Toy Sotry 4 - 3.5m
9. Tabby McTat - 3.3m
10. The 1% Club Christmas Special - 3.4m

Charlotte Moore, the BBC’s chief content officer said: “Bringing people together at Christmas matters to audiences and securing nine of the top 10 shows demonstrates how much they value the BBC’s Christmas Day line-up. We entertained viewers in their millions on Christmas Day with a range of quality programmes you really can’t find anywhere else to wrap up an outstanding year of creative content on the BBC.”