Wanted more Hamish & Andy's Gap Year Asia in ratings Wanted with, from left, Terence Dalton, Sandra Sully, Matt Doran, Dr Xanthe Mallett and Neil Mercer. Channel Ten's reality crime series Wanted made a disappointing debut last night, drawing just 649,000 viewers in the five major capital cities and failing to crack the top 20. It was smashed by Channel Nine's Hamish & Andy's Gap Year Asia (1.57 million viewers) and the Big Bang Theory (931,000). Sandra Sully needs to go to the Ross Coulthart School of How To Present Crime Stories. It also lost to ABC1's Four Corners (863,000) and Seven's Criminal Minds (673,000); however, Wanted narrowly beat Criminal Minds in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide. The program, hosted by Sandra Sully, details unsolved crimes and asks viewers to phone in with information. Media analyst Steve Allen, managing director of Fusion Strategy, said Ten would "not be feeling good" about last night's result. "I watched the first 15 minutes of it and it was pretty ho-hum," he said. There was no drama; nothing to grab the viewer by the throat and engage them. If you look at the way Ross Coulthart does a crime story on Sunday Night on Channel Seven, it's so much better. According to Allen the program's mistake was to focus too much on its host and other "talking heads." "There's no doubt that Sandra Sully is a popular presenter and people like her," he said. But what these crime shows need is immediate narrative tension and drama. You don't get that with a host; you get that by going straight into a great story. A Ten spokesman has hit out at Allen's criticisms of Wanted and previous comments about other programs. "Allen's relentlessly negative comments about Ten are a source of constant amusement," he said. His latest comments about Wanted are both hilarious and insulting. Steve is, of course, free to express his opinions but surely those opinions need to be grounded in some reality and knowledge. As far as we know, Steve has never been a TV program producer or a TV program host. Until now, we weren't aware he had taken a second job as a TV critic. And, FYI Steve, we are feeling good about Wanted's numbers. Thanks for your concern. Wanted is produced by Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder, which also made Gruen Transfer and Go Back To Where You Came From. Although the program was beaten by its commercial rivals, it did give Ten its best Monday night share since March - lifting it by almost 60 per cent. Mondays have long been a headache for the network, with flops such as Can of Worm dragging down its evening performance. Allen believes that Wanted can be improved with tighter editing and stronger promotions. "Get straight to the action and cut out most of the talking heads," he advised. As long as the next episode doesn't take 10 minutes to actually get to the drama, it could be a good show. A Channel Ten spokeswoman said the network was "very happy" with the ratings. "It's a long term project and we have a lot of faith in it," she said. The spokeswoman said Wanted was the second highest rating in Ten's target demographic of viewers under 55. The program also attracted a peak audience of 770,000 in the capital cities. "It produced a significant lift in our audience in its timeslot and it beat our internal forecasts," the spokeswoman said. Just as importantly, Wanted engaged Australians and focused their attention on unsolved crimes. The number of calls received at the Crimestoppers NSW call centre last night jumped by 400 per cent.