OFI Sunday

OFI Sunday was a British entertainment show hosted by Chris Evans. It aired on Sundays on ITV at 10:30 pm. The title stood for "Oh Flip It's Sunday", similar to the previous show TFI Friday. Reception Critical reaction was extremely poor. Many considered it self-indulgent and esoteric with Evans creating features that were clearly designed more for the amusement of the host and guest and/or studio audience than the viewers, notably when James Nesbitt guested, Evans brought on a pub band that the pair had seen playing on a night out. While the pair clearly revelled in the situation, the audience was obviously not privy to the joke. Criticism was also levelled at the way Evans consistently played on events from his personal life. Most of the guests were also friends of Evans, with the first being his ex-wife Billie Piper which further supported claims over Evans's self-indulgence. Critics also slated Evans for asking live on the second show for celebrity guests to call into the show while holding up a sign saying "Please", admitting they don't have anybody booked which was seen as an act of "desperation". Cancellation The series was cancelled after just five episodes, with another series planned depending on its reception. At first the debut show began with 5 million viewers at 10:30 pm, but by the end of the 45-minute show, the audience had halved to 2.5 million, fewer than the 3.3 million watching Notting Hill on Channel 4 between 11 pm and 11:15 pm. Due to the heavy drop in ratings during the progress of each show (the second started with 5 million which it inherited from I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, but ended up with a loss from the first show of 700,000 by 11:15 pm) and falling ratings week-by-week, OFI Sunday was axed by ITV resulting in a second series never being made. It also never ranked in the ITV top 30 weekly BARB ratings and was another flop for UMTV. The sixth show was shown on 30 December 2005 which was on a Friday (as explained by Evans on the fifth show) and does not appear on "OFI Sunday" episode lists on various websites. Guests for the 30 December show were Will Young, Katie Melua and Ulrika Jonsson. There were plans to have a tribute band who were picked by Evans as the best one in the country to appear on this edition, but this was scrapped by UMTV after the two unaired pilot episodes of the main series filmed in early November.