Sounds Like Friday Night: BBC's new music show receives very mixed reaction

Lots of comparisons to Top of the Pops

The BBC’s latest primetime Friday music show — Sounds Like Friday Night —has begun, receiving a severely mixed reaction from viewers.

Billed as a cross between Top of the Pops and Saturday Night Live, the new show features various comedy sketches, live music performances, and interviews.

The first episode — hosted by Radio 1's Greg James and Radio 1 Xtra's Dotty — saw Jason Derulo perform songs, while Dave Grohl of The Foo Fighters also made a brief appearance pretending to do voice-overs for BBC Radio.

Social media users seemed relatively unimpressed by the new show, most comparing unfavourably to Top of the Pops, many wanting more music and less funny business.

However, some were favourable, particularly about the music performances.

Sounds Like Friday Night marks the first regular live music show to broadcast on BBC One for over ten years. Before airing, one of the hosts was already defending the show.

“These sort of shows need time to bed in and people need to get their heads around it,” James said. “People don’t give anything enough of a chance. They go, ‘Well, did it rate? Did it get any viewers?’

“A show like this needs to be looked after by the BBC. They’ve invested a lot of time in it already and a lot of energy and money, so they need to stand by it and be confident and be bold and just trust it. You need to give things a bit of time to develop and find its own audience.”