The sexy new drama MVP put a damper on what had been a week of solid midseason debuts for CBC, unable to capture an audience befitting the weighty promotion it received from the network.

The premiere episode drew a soft 383,000 viewers (2+) in the Friday 9 p.m. timeslot, putting it at the lower end of numbers generated by other new series The Border (710,000), Sophie (630,000) and jPod (472,000) earlier in the week. MVP generated more than half its audience in the key 25-54 demographic, according to CBC. It aired opposite CTV’s supernatural drama Moonlight and Global’s Friday Night Lights.

‘MVP met our sales expectations for its launch, as did all our other programs last week,’ CBC programming head Kirstine Layfield tells Playback Daily.

MVP, produced by Toronto’s Screen Door (Shades of Black), follows the often scandalous lives of hockey pros and their wives and girlfriends off the ice. It stars Dillon Casey (Victor, Too Young to Marry), Kristin Booth (Prairie Giant), Matthew Bennett (Battlestar Galactica) and Deborah Odell (The Best Years).

The much-hyped series received generally positive reviews from critics leading up to its debut, with The Globe and Mail‘s John Doyle calling it ‘really fun, fresh and frisky,’ while Dose.ca columnist Leah Collins wrote that MVP ‘boasts enough steamy plot twists in its first season to melt the ACC rink.’