Building on a strong December, the first month of the New Year saw a record-high 328 million requests on the video-on-demand (VOD) and catch-up service across the month, a 10% increase on the same month last year. There was a record average of 10.6 million daily requests for TV content in January, and requests from connected TV devices reached a record-high proportion of 54%.

Driving the uptake was new flagship crime drama McMafia which was streamed 3.4 million times. Three other episodes of the series that aired later in January 2018 also feature in the top ten most popular BBC iPlayer programmes in January. Other strongly performing programmes included the first episodes of the returning Silent Witness, which saw 2.3 million requests, and pre-apocalypse detective drama Hard Sun, which saw 2.2 million. Hard Sun was made available to watch on BBC iPlayer as a box set after the first episode aired, and the first three episodes of the series all made the top 20 most popular episodes of the month.

Commenting on the month’s figures, BBC controller of programming and daytime Dan McGolpin said: “2018 has got off to a flying start, thanks in no small part to a range of gripping BBC dramas. McMafia, Hard Sun and Silent Witness dominate our most popular programmes on iPlayer for January, as does the always strong-performing EastEnders. It was also impressive to see the wildlife series Big Cats make this month’s top 5 performing series with an average of over one million requests per episode. It’s been a great start to the year, and we’re aiming to build on that success in the coming months.”