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"Mr Selfridge and Ripper Street were involved in a closely-fought ratings battle on Sunday night. The ITV period drama came out on top with 5.43m (21.5%) as well as 520,000 on +1, while BBC One&amp;#039;s gory series took 5.22m (20.7%) for its fifth, critically-acclaimed story. Ripper Street beat the lavish star-studded series for the first time last week after being boosted by the return of Call the Midwife.   Both popular shows will clash in the 9pm slot for the next three weeks. Call the Midwife put in another strong performance for BBC One, topping the night with 8.69m (29.6%), although it did lose over 600,000 on last week&amp;#039;s record-breaking series two opener. But Midwife had added competition in the 8pm hour as Top Gear returned to BBC Two and the BBC HD channel with 5.29m (18.1%). Remarkably, the motoring hit managed to beat Dancing on Ice&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Skate Off&amp;#039; which could only muster 5.16m (17.2%). Anthea Turner&amp;#039;s departure was seen by a further 287k on timeshift. Dancing on Ice&amp;#039;s main show fared better with 6.9m (28.2%) from 6.30pm (+1: 189k), overwhelming Blandings (3.71m/15.7%) and Countryfile (6.24m/24.5%) on BBC One. All Star Family Fortunes held up for ITV at 7.45pm with 4.98m (17.5%) and 188,000 on +1.   Elsewhere, Professor Brian Cox&amp;#039;s new BBC Two series Wonders of Life began with 2.92m (11.8%) in the 9pm hour, while 1.53m (5.2%) watched The Hotel an hour earlier on Channel 4 (+1: 513k), and an early evening screening of Spiderman 3 attracted 1.6m (6.1%) to Channel 5 (+1: 201k). Overall, BBC One led primetime with 23.9% versus ITV&amp;#039;s 19.9% (+1: 1.1%). BBC Two strolled into third place with 10.5%, comfortably ahead of Channel 5&amp;#039;s 5% (+1: 0.8%), and Channel 4&amp;#039;s 4.7% (+1: 1%).  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ripper-street/news/a454225/itvs-mr-selfridge-bbcs-ripper-street-neck-and-neck-in-ratings/>