TV Time Machine #32: Waking the Dead, Nice Guy Eddie, World of Pub, Secret Life of Us

Luke and Matt help Gary board the TV Time Machine to travel back to review the TV landscape of June 2001. Sue Johnson leaves the Royle sofa behind and plays a very different character in the BBC's cold case procedural Waking the Dead, which ushers in what will become nine years of shouty Trevor Eve. Ricky Tomlinson gets his first post-Royle role in Nice Guy Eddie. The nice guy of the title is Eddie, an unlucky Private Eye who has a hectic home life. It's a role that doesn't challenge Tomlinson as an actor, who is playing a softer version of Jim Royle here and tonally it's all over the place, but it works in places. Next, the BBC have new comedy has World of Pub, which transferred from radio to TV. And finally, an Australian import, The Secret Life of Us, which follows a group of twentysomethings as they navigate their lives.