Channel Four's sinkhole slot at 8 p.m. has not only gone full circle, it's become a garishly large lollipop that spirals into the middle. And it's given that lollipop to parents who can't control their children's sleeping routine.
Bedtime Live shares a similar format to last year's live "experiment" with drugs, taking what is nominally a closed-door activity and giving real parents sat at home the chance to remark with stifled mirth and scorn.
It hopes to "put your kids to sleep", a claim as dubious as Channel Four's decision to commission this show for a five-week run.
The concept and delivery is crass. It uses candid cameras shooting in night vision (which brings backs memories of 1990s standards such as Noel's House Party and, perversely, Ghostwatch) to reveal, as what would be classed as its USP, parents struggling with the apparent rocket science of putting their children to bed.
Its presenters include the standard issue "child psychologist" and - somewhat bizarrely - a man who normally stands trackside at Formula One races.
In its essence, Bedtime Live shares the traditions to the lost Raj of Channel Four reality television. Big Brother, for all the debate that surrounded it, was scintillating voyeurism. Now, it seems children are the contestants, along with the handpicked parents picked on by headphone-wearing, self-serve checkout characters, glibly letting generalities spill out of their mouths. When the parent has mastered the impossible, and put their child into a target-driven state of slumber, platitudes wrapped up in cliches are dished out like treats in a supermarket aisle.
This format is not new to the London-based producers furiously scratching their heads around a whiteboard, in a world far removed from the subjects they wish to cheaply exploit.
In 2007, Channel Four aired Supernanny; a show dripping in so much Marmite it can still readily burn the inside of our gawping mouths. Jo Frost was the person who swept in from America to rush our children to the "naughty step", very much like how George Bush barracked quivering Iraqi men, women and children into accepting democracy from the end of the barrel of a gun. Frost didn't get to know our nation's young to justify this pitiful army camp drill, but parents, you sense, did it anyway. In the process she trampled on innocence, and left vulnerable parents confused at their kids' future ambivalence towards them. But, Frost presumably got enough media exposure to shift tie-in books.
Bedtime Live will, on a production and entertainment level alone, be panned. But again, from shows like this a peculiar smell lingers, very much like a soiled nappy. This, presumably, will be dealt with in the next show on Channel Four's roster: Nappy changing Live.
