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The second episode of Hell's Kitchen slumped to 3.5 million viewers and a 15% audience share between 9pm and 10pm - 3 million below the ratings for the launch show on Monday.

ITV1 is attempting to re-invent the Hell's Kitchen format, replacing Gordon Ramsay with Novelli and Gary Rhodes and substituting ordinary people for last year's celebrity contestants.

However, at this stage of last year's series, Hell's Kitchen was attracting 8.3 million viewers.

Last night the show lost out to BBC1's con artist drama Hustle, which attracted 5.4 million viewers and a 28% audience share.

Hell's Kitchen was even beaten into third place among the terrestrial networks by Channel 4's Supernanny, which was watched by 3.9 million viewers.