Ten years ago, Dame Helen Mirren appeared on the IFC channel to introduce the landmark 50th season of “Documentary Now!” With nary a wink, she threw to a “classic” documentary film called “Sandy Passage,” which begins with the shaky title cards you’d expect from a 1970s documentary touting tiny production shingles that made the film possible. For all intents and purposes, an unaware viewer may have thought they had stumbled upon an esteemed, long-running TV show that highlights old documentaries.

Then Bill Hader and Fred Armisen showed up.

“What a glorious time Peak TV was,” co-creator and writer Seth Meyers told TheWrap ahead of the show’s 10th anniversary this August and on the eve of a new Blu-ray release that packages all four seasons in a complete collection.

The brainchild of creators Hader, Armisen, Meyers and Rhys Thomas, the central conceit of “Documentary Now!” was that each episode...