The TV Time Machine # 34: Mental, Bedtime, The Armando Iannucci Shows, Grosse Point

Matt and Luke are still aboard their TV Time Machine, looking back at the TV landscape of August 2001. Like in 2026, the TV isn't at its best in the summer, but we have found 4 shows to discuss, and each one is worthy of discussion. On UKTV Play, which became Dave, Iain Lee hosts an innovative but rough-around-the-edges music quiz entitled Mental. Off the back of Drop the Dead Donkey, comedian and satirist Andy Hamilton writes and directs a new comedy drama Bedtime, which focuses on three couples in the same street as they settle down to bed.  Before The Thick of It, but after the huge successes of Knowing Me, Knowing You and I'm Alan Partridge, writer and producer Armando Iannucci puts himself front and centre in his Channel 4 sketch show The Armando Iannucci Shows. It's a strange sketch series with overarching themes, and it features future names like Stephen Mangan and Tony Gardener, but it doesn't quite hang together. Lastly, over on E4, we have the American comedy Grosee Point, which goes behind the scenes of a popular teen drama. Not all of it works, but it's a show incredibly ahead of its time, and because of that, it is entirely possible that the audience who are watching Sabrina The Teenage Witch weren't ready for it at all. The series came before The Comeback and 30 Rock. Lastly, as always, Matt tests Luke's bizarre music knowledge of the time.