A new series on STV - looking at key years in the history of Scottish football - got off to a good start last night, with the first episode netting a 20 per cent share of its available audience - in other words, 410,000 viewers.

Insodoing, The Football Years, outperformed the rest of the ITV network by five per cent.

And it is estimated that, among male viewers in particular, the audience share was 30 per cent, 16 per cent ahead of the network.

Last night's first episode focused on 1967, 'The Year of the Scots' - when Scotland beat newly-crowned world champions, England, Celtic won the European Cup, Kilmarnock reached the semi-final of the Fairs Cities Cup and Rangers finished beaten finalists in the European Cup Winners' Cup.

Narrated by The Thick of It actor, Peter Capaldi, the series will run for another five weeks, on Thursday’s at 9pm.

Says Alan Clements, director of content at STV: “We had every confidence in The Football Years. This is a high quality and fascinating series of wide appeal and I’m delighted that this home-grown production is delivering such strong audiences in a peak time slot. We have found that when we schedule strong Scottish productions, they perform well for us and The Football Years is no exception.”

Coming up on The Football Years: 2003, 1979, 1998, 1971/2 and 1982.