TFI Friday Unplugged review – Chris Evans struggles to recapture the spirit of the 90s chat show juggernaut | TV and radio

TThe biggest chat show news of 2026 so far has been Claudia Winkleman’s foray into celebrity chin shaking, not least because there was something a little smug about the lovable traitorous host taking on the genre. Not because of any shortcomings on Winkleman’s part, but because chat shows seem almost impossible (especially for female hosts; the UK TV scene is littered with attempts at one-off series by Nigella, Davina and Lily Allen).

While the country was watching Winkleman, another veteran anchor was debuting her new talk show to much less fanfare — and much less pressure. In February, Chris Evans began releasing episodes of TFI: Unplugged on YouTube. Produced by Virgin Radio – where Evans has hosted the breakfast show for the past seven years – this was a low-key endeavor that saw the broadcaster join a group of guests in a trashy studio lined with professionally dressed staff forced to laugh and shout. However, the guests were good (Danny Dyer, Chris Hemsworth, Bono, Noah Wyle) and the program quickly built a decent audience – so much so that Channel 4 deemed it worth it to get a six-episode series that had only just started broadcasting at 11pm on Fridays. Will the revival of the 90s juggernaut become the real chat show story of the year?

This isn’t the first time the TFI franchise has been revived. There was an anniversary special and one new series in 2015, but the return was hampered by Evans going crazy, as Evans’ long-time TFI friend Will MacDonald said in this latest installment. It seems to be a reference to the former’s abrupt departure from Top Gear the following year, but unfortunately we couldn’t get any more information about that decade-long drama. However, we did get MacDonald to showcase some of the books he wrote in the ’90s taking advantage of TFI’s Pub Genius feature, which involved him performing booze-themed party tricks. You’d have to be pretty obsessed with the show’s lore to get any kicks from this section — though anyone can enjoy McDonald’s latest stunt, which involves pouring beer into a sherry glass without using their hands.

This is the closest TFI: Unplugged comes to recapturing the spirit of the original, which is mostly a relief. Undeniably in the zeitgeist, the original show always carried a certain amount of moral nausea: a collection of light-hearted, often cruel humor (other regular features include self-explanatory “Fat Lookalikes”) that drew riffs on Britpop (many of the bands in the scene performed) and hosted cheeky interrogations that have since been repackaged as YouTube videos with titles like “Vinnie Jones Storms Out Of Live TV Interview” (he just did it for the sake of Joking).

However, we did get some actual footage from the first round: Evans’ 1999 interview with David Bowie was incorporated into the show (the second time she appeared in an Unplugged episode). You can see why the presenter would be keen to remind people of what happened, but this bizarre encounter – in which the overly talkative Bowie claims he contracted gastroenteritis from eating monkey meat – is strange, and not in a good way.

More fun are excerpts from old musical shows: Sleeper, The Cure, Garbage. At a time when music has disappeared from broadcast television, Evans seems determined to redress that balance. Current guests include Jack Savoretti (whom Evans repeatedly congratulates for reaching No. 1 on the album charts this week, but oddly enough he actually only reached No. 2) and indie star Shreya Ghoshal, who performs a cover of Coldplay’s “Fix You.” As promised in the press release for this episode are Gemma Arterton and Peter Capaldi, but the only other guest star is another musician, Sam Ryder, who can’t sing because he’s lost his voice.

Aside from the complete absence of arousing bad taste, the other major difference between the TFI and its predecessor is quality. This is addressed early on in a suitably silly parody of the Netflix docuseries Formula 1: Drive To Survive, in which Evans describes this version of his show as “like the old show – just 1% of the budget”. Announcing the broadcast, Channel 4’s commissioning editor, Simran Shah, claimed that TFI had been conducting “abstract, character-led conversation long before visual podcasts were before our eyes!” The old TFI didn’t remotely resemble podcasts — a format that only has the potential to be outrageous in an obsessive, idea-driven way — but aesthetically, this reboot is closer to audio video than anything else.

However, spiritually, it doesn’t seem like a very good time. The beauty of an interview podcast is that it maintains the illusion of a private conversation, which means its participants aren’t cowardly manipulating the audience. On the other hand, this show has managed to maintain the sweaty-smile craziness of live television while stripping away any of the sexy glamour. Evans’ interview style is intense and lively, but unlike the insight you often get from podcast conversations, it’s generally quite superficial.

In general, rebranding as a grassroots endeavor is not a bad idea. Although TFI Friday Unplugged won’t upset the zeitgeist — or Winkleman’s similarly fraught attempts to make a chat show a success — this relaxed, frenetic revival caters to nostalgia well enough to justify its inexpensive existence.