The five-part series, which stars Oscar-winning actress Dench in a comedy of manners set in the Cheshire market town of Cranford, earned a 29.1% share of audience between 9pm-10pm, according to unofficial overnight figures.
On ITV1 during the same slot, the latest instalment of the seventh series of 'I'm a Celebrity...' was watched by 7.2m viewers and a 26.1% share.
Although the audience figures for last night's 'I'm a Celebrity...' were not enough to win its slot, they match the audience average for last year's sixth series, and are slightly up on figures from last week.
In the same primetime slot, BBC Two's 'Long Way Down', in which actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman travel through Africa on motorbikes, drew 3.9m viewers and a 14.1% share.
Earlier in the evening, Channel 4's popular reality series, 'Wife Swap', attracted 1.9m viewers and a 6.6% share in the 8-9pm slot.
Meanwhile, the BBC has once again become embroiled in a fakery row, having been accused of deceiving viewers in recent factual entertainment series 'Mountain'.
The final episode, which was broadcast in August, showed comedian Griff Rhys Jones climbing Ben Nevis and claiming in a voiceover recorded after the event, "I've made it to the summit of Britain's highest mountain".
However, Ken Crocket, a respected climber and author, has raised the question of whether Jones merely reached a "top" on the summit plateau, instead of the summit itself.
The "top" the programme showed Jones on was 129m lower than the Ben Nevis summit, almost 2km away.
.jpg)
.jpg)