'Molly' Miniseries Smashes Competition

Highly-anticipated Molly Meldrum miniseries Molly has smashed all expectations and competition in the airing of its first episode last night, picking up a mammoth 1.79 million viewers on the Seven Network.

As TV Tonight reports, Molly was last night's number one show. It more than tripled The X Files which was up against it on Ten. Molly also outstripped its lead-in show My Kitchen Rules, pulling in an extra 400,000 viewers than the regular ratings winner. It also beat out its direct competition on ABC (Vera at 688,000) and Nine (60 Minutes at 607,000).

Comparing it to previous music bio-series on Seven, Molly trounced last year's Peter Allen miniseries Peter Allen: Not The Boy Next Door, which was a huge success in itself, by a solid 500,000 viewers. It even outdid INXS: Never Tear Us Apart which back in February 2014 picked up 1.76 million viewers for its finale. 

The show trended on Twitter for much of the night with the #Molly hashtag and enjoyed a bolster on the iTunes charts to #3 with the Molly soundtrack, beaten only by Adele's 25 at #2 and Coldplay's A Head Full Of Dreams at #1. 

Adding to the hype about the miniseries as of late, Meldrum experienced a fall when he was in Thailand, with a doctor telling him he was lucky to not be paralysed after the fall. Samuel Johnson, who plays Meldrum in the miniseries, also told the media last week that he was "dead broke" since playing the role of Meldrum.

Molly's second and last episode airs this weekend.