THE first episode of The Dales TV series pulled in more than four million viewers.

The ITV programme, presented by Bradford-born comedian Adrian Edmondson, follows some of the people living and working in the Dales, including Craven vet Neil Roberts.

Welcome to Yorkshire, which was involved in the making of the series, hopes it will spark a boom in tourism to the Dales this summer and has created a website – yorkshire.com/thedales – which had 2,600 hits on one day alone.

Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, said: “This is a phenomenal success with our stunning Yorkshire Dales being beamed into the homes of 4.4 million viewers across the nation.

“We’ve created a special website for the programme which shows who and where is featured in the programme. This saw a great spike in hits so we hope that it will lead people to booking a holiday and coming to see our Yorkshire Dales for themselves.”