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More than 22m people watched any of the three that took place in the run up to the . It's hard to tell what kind of impact the debates had on voting behaviour - voter turnout was up on 2005 from 61.4% in 2005 to 65.1% - but it is clear that the debates engaged viewers.

The success of the debates at this election makes them a very likely feature at the next, so we asked viewers what they thought of the debates.

The key themes that came back were a desire for more grilling of the leaders and a greater degree of audience participation. Many said that they wanted the moderator to be able to respond once the leaders had spoken.

The rigidity of the debate was a slight bugbear for audiences. Just a third thought the programmes were spontaneous or that there were surprising elements in the debate and a significant minority felt the staged responses and tight rules were a weakness of the debate.

Of course the rules of the debate aren't just for the broadcasters to decide - the parties themselves heavily influence this - but we will feed these views into discussions next time round.

is Head of Audiences, Journalism