Farage was the only leader to provoke an emotional reaction, earning laughs and applause from at least two of the male viewers, who had voted Lib Dem and Labour in 2010.
BBC1 was marginally down on the 4.1 million viewers who turned in five years ago, with ITV suffering a more precipitous drop from 1.3 million last time round.
BBC1's Election 2015 programme had an average of 4.3 million viewers, a 38.5% share, from 9.55pm on Thursday, kicking off with its shock exit poll that predicted an unexpected 316 seats for the Conservatives.
Channel 4 began with 1.7 million viewers (8%) from 9pm, rising to 2 million viewers (9.1%) for a Last Leg special with Adam Hills at 9.30pm and 1.9 million viewers (10%) for a Gogglebox election edition at 10pm.
"There is no way I would not want the available material not to be seen by viewers," she said.
Shillinglaw said the task of reinventing the show, which is watched by 6 million viewers on BBC2 and is a global hit generating £50m a year for the BBC, was "a challenge but it's genuinely creatively exciting".
Or maybe it's because she's been stuck with Brannan, so all the viewers will subconsciously equate the image of her with the image of Gerard Butler's corpse.
The broadcaster RTÉ said 500,000 viewers watched its coverage of the Queen planting a tree at the presidential residence on Tuesday, and other channels also covered the occasion.
It was the number one show in every city on Wednesday and peaked at almost 3m viewers nationally, eclipsing shows on other networks such as The Weekly with Charlie Pickering on ABC which averaged 556,00 in the five capital cities.
Viewers of its former home, BBC1, will have to wait until some time in the new year.
For his part, Cameron looked a little remote and would have suffered if viewers' attention had not been divided into seven parts.
