The Graham Norton Show rallied to a series high on Friday night (May 4) of nearly 4 million viewers.
Featuring Jessie J, Simon Amstell and Didier Drogba, the chat show managed an impressive 3.92m (25.9%) for BBC One in its late slot of 10.35pm - a climb of over 600k week-on-week.
With Jason Donovan as guest, Piers Morgan's Life Stories recorded 4.06m (17.6%) in the more popular 9pm slot, adding 289k an hour later on ITV1 +1.
Meanwhile, Alan Carr: Chatty Man mustered 1.5m (8.4%) for Channel 4 in the 10pm hour, logging a further 182k on timeshift.
Elsewhere, BBC One's comedy night blossomed as Would I Lie To You?Have I Got News For You (4.32m/19%) and Not Going Out (4.32m/19%) all grew between 8.30pm and 10pm.
The Mentalist was by far Channel 5's best-rated programme with 1.53m (6.6%), putting the network ahead of BBC Two and Channel 4 in the 9pm slot.
New impressions show Very Important People slipped to 844k (3.7%) at 9.30pm (+1: 138k), prior to which 8 Out of 10 Cats amused 1.1m (4.7%) and 233k an hour later.
Over on BBC Two, Maestro at the Opera unveiled itself with 1.03m (4.4%) at 9pm, then the channel's audience soared to 2.37m (12%) for 10pm's QI.
Boosted by the soaps, ITV1 led primetime with 21.8% (+1: 0.7%) against BBC One's 20.7%. BBC Two was third with 6.6%, while Channel 4 averaged 4.9% (+1: 0.8%), and Channel 5 had 3.8% (+1: 0.1%).
A League of Their Own crept up to 483k (2.1%) for Sky1 at 9pm, but was pipped by BBC Four's 577k (2.5%) for a repeat of music documentary Fleetwood Mac: Don't Stop.
