Channel 4's brave scheduling of a contemporary version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in peak time on a Bank Holiday backfired last night, with just 600,000 viewers tuning in.

The combination of a Coronation Street double bill and the nailbiting climax to the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield conspired to make viewers reject Channel 4's more cerebral two-hour offering, which aired at 6.55pm last night.

The adaptation, which starred Bend it Like Beckham actress Parminder Nagra in the lead role of Viola, had been heavily pushed by C4 as evidence of its continued commitment to risk-taking programming.

But viewers relaxing on the Bank Holiday turned instead to the likes of Coronation Street on ITV, which had 10.2 million viewers at 7.30pm and 12 million viewers at 8.30pm.

Encouragingly for EastEnders bosses, the BBC1 soap overtook Coronation Street in the ratings for the first time since the northern soap's Richard Hillman-driven renaissance.

Tabloid speculation about the return of Dennis Watts may have helped push the show's ratings to 12.6 million, half the available audience at 8pm.

More successful for Channel 4 was its return to the faithful listing format, as it devoted six-and-a-half hours over two nights to a poll to find the 100 Greatest Movie Stars.

Topped by Al Pacino, the show had a healthy average of 2.7 million viewers between 9pm and 12.05pm last night, peaking at 3.5 million as the rundown reached its climax.

And the heart-stopping climax to snooker's World Championship was a hit for BBC2.

The audience rose steadily throughout the day as Ken Doherty fought back from 10-2 down only to be beaten at the last by Welshman Mark Williams.

The afternoon session, between 2.50pm and 6.15pm, had an average of 3.4 million viewers while the climactic evening session had 5.2 million, peaking at 7.1 million - one in four viewers - when Williams clinched the championship at 11pm.

But BBC1's new police drama, starring James Nesbitt as a maverick undercover cop in Murphy's Law, was a disappointment in ratings terms. It had an average of 5.1 million viewers, one fifth of the audience, between 8.30pm and 10pm.

Meanwhile, ratings for I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! returned to their previous high levels after dipping over the course of the weekend.

Almost 10 million viewers tuned in to see weather forecaster Sian Lloyd become the first celebrity voted off the show.