MANY Marcella fans eagerly anticipated the ITV noir’s return, but it seems not as many people switched on compared to previous seasons.
The detective drama starring Anna Friel as the titular character premiered the first two episodes on Tuesday night.
While the series return was generally well received, far few people tuned in last night than they did for Marcella’s second season.
According to the Barb TV ratings, last night’s airing drew 2.8mil viewers for the first episode or 15.4% of the audience share .
But it lost almost one million viewers after the first episode with only 1.9mil viewers tuning in for the second episode – 14.2% of the available audience.
That’s a pretty big drop from the second series which aired in 2018 and averaged 3.4million viewers and 16.4% of the audience share.
Friel stars as Marcella who has reinvented herself as blonde ‘Keira’, moved to Belfast from London and ditched her mummy chic jumpers for a sexy designer wardrobe.
She also appears to have infiltrated a dangerous crime family and might still be working as police officer, even though everyone thinks she’s dead.
Excited fans had waited more than six months for it after the third series was released globally in 2020.
Although Friel previously said the new series would be released in September – but due to controversial scenes the show was delayed further.
Anna, who is executive producer of the show, told the Daily Mail: “It’s been delayed here because of the opening scenes featuring refugees who are killed.
“ITV thought the storyline was too similar to the court case and they wanted to make sure the jury wasn’t prejudiced.
“So we had to wait, which is such a shame because it went out in 34 countries and was a huge success but people here haven’t been able to see it.
“It’s frustrating, but you can’t help that Hans could seemingly see into the future.”
Most of the 2.8mil fans who did tune in were shocked at Marcella’s sexy blonde transformation and reinvention as a woman named Keira.
Many also took to Twitter to profess how “fit” most of the cast were.
One Twitter user wrote: “@annafriel is still my girl crush.”
Another added: “I really quite fancy Finn tbh.”
And a third said: “God #Marcella looks smoking hot in the new episode’s tonight. Need that hair please.”
Marcella airs on Tuesdays at 9pm on ITV with a third series and the whole third series is available on ITV Hub.
