It was meant to be the young and vibrant drama series to catch the all-important youth audience and be the hit of the autumn, but this weekend the BBC has confirmed that it is pulling its eight-part drama series The Innocence Project from the schedules.

Peter Fincham, the BBC1 controller, has resigned himself to the fact that the drama, which has been shown on Thursdays at 8pm, is not cutting the mustard for his channel which, in common with many, is fighting a losing battle to reach out to younger audiences.

The Innocence Project was a promising idea based on a group of young and good-looking trainee lawyers committed to overturning miscarriages of justice.

The cast is headed by Lloyd Owen, who plays a professor in charge of students who include Shelley Conn as Eve Walker and Gangs of New York actor Stephen Graham as mature student Andrew on sabbatical from the police.

The series was based on real-life projects in the UK and America. Bristol University is the home to an Innocence Project in which students provide free assistance to the victims of miscarriages of justice. It is thought to have alerted the interest of Barry George, the man convicted of killing TV presenter Jill Dando. Fourteen students from Northumbria University also took on the case of Alex Allan who was wrongly found guilty of robbery. They finally got his conviction quashed in 2001.

The BBC1 drama also had the pedigree of being made by Tightrope, the independent production company co-run by Paul Abbott, author of the acclaimed Channel 4 series Shameless. But The Innocence Project failed to pull in an big audience, this week reaching a low of 2.6 million viewers and a share of just 11 per cent of the high-profile 8pm slot, which can generate audiences of up to eight million.

The Innocence Project opened with 3.4 million viewers and a share of 15 per cent following generally disappointing preview notices and reviews.

The Observer's television critic, Kathryn Flett, described the series as 'blandly forgettable', beginning her review of episode one last month with a deliberately weary metaphor to show the level of her disdain for the series. 'A recipe for drama,' she wrote. 'Take one random murder conviction it is impossible to care very much about because we never got to know the victim or the perpetrator; blend with a bunch of smug young law students rooting out dull miscarriages of justice; whisk up some sexual chemistry between "cool cute guy" and "prissy uptight girl" (around which orbit "nerd", "feisty northern bird", "babe" and "bloke") and lace with exchanges such as: Cool Guy: "I thought parole wasn't conditional on admitting guilt?" Feisty Bird: "Oh, he's Category B. Parole's only available to category C inmates!"'

'We commissioned The Innocence Project as part of a strategy to develop new pre-watershed drama for BBC1,' Fincham said. 'It has played in a difficult slot against I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! and we have decided to find it a new slot in the New Year.'

A BBC spokeswoman said the remaining episodes will 'definitely be shown', but that it was not yet known when.

The problem of struggling ratings is not confined to the BBC. Earlier this year, ITV1's controller of drama, Andy Harries, complained that his channel was 'unfashionable'. ITV has also failed to impress younger audiences with shows such as the Rik Mayall comedy drama All About George and Vincent, in which Ray Winstone played a private detective. It attracted disappointing audiences of less than five million