What is the benefit of doing a sitcom in a mockumentary format?
At one time it was very fresh. Rob Reiner’s THIS IS SPINAL TAP used the device as a novel and fun way to tell a movie story.
Ricky Gervais’ British version of THE OFFICE also used it to good effect. But it made sense there. There were only a few episodes shot. So you can understand that a documentary crew filmed them for a few months and distilled all the footage into just a few episodes.
The American version of THE OFFICE strained credibility. Why was this crew shooting for years and years? Still, you overlooked that because, at the time, THE OFFICE was a fresh way to mount a sitcom.
Not sure why a documentary crew would follow around the folks at PARKS & REC but the show developed into such a funny and charming sitcom you didn’t mind. At least I didn’t mind.
By the time MODERN FAMILY hit the airwaves the device seemed tired. It reached a point when the mockumentary style detracted from the series.
And then there are the logistics. Where are all these cameramen? In MODERN FAMILY there’s the episode where the kids catch their parents having sex. We see them bring up breakfast in bed and open the bedroom door. We see their point of view suggesting the parents are busily engaged. The kids are horrified, slam the door closed, and leave. Then we cut inside the bedroom where the parents are discussing what just happened. So wait a minute — for a camera to be in the bedroom to capture that exchange it already had to be there — when they were having sex. I brought that up to one of the show’s producers and he said, “Hmmmm. Never thought of that.”
The mockumentary formal causes limitations. How intimate can characters’ conversations be when they know they’re being filmed? And when you watch these shows, sometimes the characters know and react to being filmed and other times they act as if they’re oblivious to it.
This year we have ABBOTT ELEMENTARY, a well-written well-received new sitcom. But they too utilize the mockumentary device. And I ask the question: why? What added value does it serve? It’s certainly no longer fresh. And a lot of the jokes revolve around people squirming knowing they did something embarrassing that now is being seen by the world. They’re the same jokes THE OFFICE did a thousand times twenty years ago.
If there’s an organic reason why a series needs to tell stories through this device, that’s fine. Or if the characters are hoping this “documentary” will result in more funding or change in any way then I say great. But to do it just to do it — to me it’s the new laughtrack.
What do you guys think?
67 comments :
People forget that Woody Allen already had, not one, but two mockumentaries under his belt before Spinal Tap (Take the Money and Run, and Zelig). Also, Spinal Tap wasn't even the first musical mockumentary... that accolade goes to The Rutles, produced in part by Beatle George Harrison.
But the format has become strained, ever since The Muppets had attempted to try that form. Talk about straining credulity.
I agree with everything you said Ken. I am a big fan of Modern Family, The Office, Parks and Rec, and I have been enjoying Abbott Elementary so far but I agree this format can be a crutch and is now very stale. To have a character explain to the camera his inner thoughts is a short-cut around writing a scene that would SHOW to us what those inner thoughts are. And having a character look at the camera in confusion or bug-eyed with embarrassment gets old quick. Abbott Elementary has a very good cast and the potential for a breakout character in the Principal but it needs to move away from the format.
To be fair, it's not as if it makes the kind of sense you're looking for to imagine how there could be three cameras wherever the characters of a more conventional sitcom go. That's not a fresh approach, either.
It's a way for lazy writers to avoid writing actual comedy. Instead they rely on characters saying dumb things or having no filter, followed by deadpan reactions or characters looking awkwardly into the camera.
It's the equivalent of lazy, no-talent hack directors who slap a rap song over an action scene to generate energy and momentum because they don't have the first clue how to create it organically.
I enjoyed the doc-style in ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and THE OFFICE. By the time of PARKS & REC I tolerated it; after that it became (as you said) an annoying laugh track.
This is very similar to how I feel about the whole "found footage" genre of film, which has a lot of the same "suspension of disbelief" issues as the mockumentary. There are ways to do it right, and even after many years of the concept being mangled by zero-talent filmmakers, an effective movie like "The Bay" can be made when the writer/director try and find logical reasons why the events unfolding on the screen were being filmed by the characters. Even for a movie like Cloverfield, which was well-received, I still found myself taken out of the moment at various points during the movie when logic ground to a halt and I'd be yelling "why on earth would you be filming this, at this very moment, and not just hauling ass??".
I don't think I noticed how irritating the mockumentary format of The Office could be until the show started its life on the streaming services. Once you start binge watching it, the silliness of the concept of a documentary crew hanging around the office of a paper company for year after year really gets hammered home. And for as silly and surreal (and stupid) as that show got in its final three years, they could have dropped the whole mockumentary concept entirely and played it like a straight sitcom and I doubt anyone would have cared.
Totally agree.
And Gervais wasn't even first. There was a UK show called "People Like Us" that came before "The Office", and, in a lot of ways, was funnier.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0214362/
Perhaps my favorite mockumentary isn't a sitcom at all, but a movie: Drop Dead Gorgeous. One thing that I didn't appreciate when I first saw it but absolutely do now is how committed it remains to the format. The film sticks pretty religiously to the film crew's perspective, hands-off as they are, and refuses to show things that it wouldn't make sense for the film crew to have seen. Their presence as a documentary crew is acknowledged repeatedly throughout the film, and they spend the entire movie trying to just document the beauty pageant that they are there for, no matter what else happens.
Drop Dead Gorgeous is by no means perfect, and it's got some stuff that would probably make a lot of people pretty angry if it were made today, but I can't think of many other movies or ANY other TV shows that use the mockumentary format as well.
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT kept the format fresh well before it could get stale by excluding the "talking heads" altogether (already a staple in documentary-style "reality" shows) in favor of a narration instead. Of course, over time the mockumentary aspect wasn't necessary since the single camera format without a laugh track established itself by then (hell, MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE preceded all of them without the pretense). 30 ROCK was the most ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT-like show but was played straight. COMMUNITY even made fun of the documentary style at least once when Abed was filming one in-universe.
Of course you're right. My first exposure to Modern Family (when it was on network) happened to be with my back turned, washing dishes, and I thought it was funny and listened to the whole episode. Then I tried viewing one and it seemed terribly contrived.
Whether "documentary" or not, TV directors should get away from the terribly cliched handheld-camera look, which hasn't been fresh since NBC's Homicide in the 1990s, and relearn how to use a damn tripod.
youre 10000% right. But yeah, I am LOVING Abbot Elementary :)
I really can’t stand the format and wish Abbott didn’t use it (though I really enjoy the show).
It’s such a specific device. If, as Ken often says, many writers rooms discard any joke that’s been done, why in the world would they steal a device that’s been used again and again?
Advice to producers of Abbott: dump the device for season two. No one will miss it.
It doesn't bother me at all. It's not meant to be "realistic."
How did you feel about "Fleabag"?
(Ken, have loved the blog; first time commenter) I agreed that on Modern Family the format didn't make much sense, but I generally found she show funny enough (and usually very funny) that I marked it down to "suspension of disbelief." And, for me, Modern Family is the new Law and Order, in the sense that I can be scrolling through the channels and if I happen on an episode, I will often watch it, and be very entertained, without having to worry about what happened in the previous episodes (that I have not seen in years.)
Bill
PS: For me, the "doesn't make sense" thing in shows in general, and sitcoms in particular, is characters living in nice, or very nice, homes who don't seem to have dishwashers. "Washing the dishes" is such a trope ("My husband does a terrible job...") for people with granite counters and 6 burner stoves, but no dishwasher. That, and characters in movies getting into cars, not putting on seat belts, and not being driven crazy by the beeping.
I have never really cared for that style of delivery for sitcoms.
At least THE OFFICE acknowledged how ridiculous it would be for a docmentary crew to still be filming them after so many years. I believe it was the final episode when Pam looked into the camera and said "Don't you guys have enough footage YET?"
The only advantage I can see to this style is when the characters talk directly to the camera to advance the plot. It adds more story without taking up as much time. I also think that this is a lazy device that can be accomplished better within the action of the story.
I had forgotten Modern Family was a mockumentary. Seems to me it only works if the characters break the fourth wall which happened on The Office (sort of).
Jonathan Winters last film was in the mockumentary style about an exhibit of his art which was happening. But it also had elements which seemed very real. He talks about the fact that his parents (apparently then long dead) were failed 1950s entertainers who resented his success and even told him that they didn't think he was funny. It made for a rather shocking moment.
I'd love to see a mockumentary about the making of a mockumentary.
I loved this format in Christopher Guest movies, liked it okay in the early seasons of "The Office," but quickly got tired of it and never really got into "Parks & Rec" or "Modern Family." Now, the comedy of people squirming uncomfortably on camera just seems done to death. I think it survives because younger writers grew up on it and think that's the only way to do a comedy show.
It reminds me of a time before this came along when I was head writer for a local cable comedy show. People would bring their sketches to me, and I noticed that most used the then-common SNL trope of an announcer saying, "And now it's time for another episode of 'Two Guys on a Park Bench!'" I kept pointing out that there was nothing about these sketches that required them to be TV show parodies. They could just cut the intro and outro and make it a sketch about two guys on a park bench. They would stare at me as if I'd asked why their amplifier volume knobs went to 11. I felt like I was in a mockumentary.
I was LITERALLY having these same thoughts last night watching the latest episode of Abbott Elementary AND an old rerun of Modern Family on one of NBC's many cable networks (I think the E! channel...they seem to have doubled the amount of Modern Family reruns now that the Kardashians have defected to streaming).
On the Modern Family rerun, there was another bedroom scene where the camera catches pregnant Gloria snoring, much to Jay's chagrin. I immediately thought, "Why would they let the camera in there? My wife's snoring wouldn't be keeping me awake...the dude with a camera watching me and my wife in bed would be keeping me awake!" But what's interesting is that when I initially watched these episodes during their original run (I still love that show's first few seasons), these observations about the camera never occurred to me, or even bothered me. I guess since I've seen many of these episodes multiple times, I'm just starting to notice other things.
As for why Abbott Elementary adopted the mockumentary format...I think I read Quinta Brunson say that the whole conceit of the pilot was that the school is so underfunded that they decided to allow a camera crew to film them for a documentary on struggling public schools to pocket some more money for the school. Makes sense from a story standpoint, but it's Still is unnecessary, though.
And you're correct that the "squirming to the camera" schtick is the single-camera sitcom's version of the laugh track.
I concur with Unknown (is that THE Murray Langston?) about People Like Us by John Morton. It was on for two seasons on TV and the episodes were/are so funny that the three seasons on radio (which preceded the TV show) were just as much fun.
They even played with the conceit. Roy Mallard (Chris Langham), the reporter in all of the episode is, by all accounts, is so unattractive, no one believes that he is married and it is thought best that he remains off-screen.
It was cute at first, but now I have a hard time watching anything where a character is talking or looking into the camera. Stop talking to me. Game's out there, buddy.
There's a 2014 indie film "Authors Anonymous" that uses the device of filming the conflicts of a writers group. The characters refer to the project (though we never see the camera/interviewers) and show a certain self-consciousness but otherwise the mockumentary gimmick just seems to be in the way of the story. It is pretty entertaining and worth seeing just for Dennis Farina, I think it was his last film.
My favorite mockumentary is probably A Mighty Wind, I can't imagine the movie not being a mockumentary. There's all kinds of subtext in Christopher Guest's films that validate the mockumentary style.
Years ago I visited a friend in Hawaii and while we were preparing dinner her father was in the adjoining room watching Woody Allen's Zelig. He got really excited and called us in to watch it too: "Look, this guy turned into a gekko and they made a movie about him!"
THE OFFICE was very scrupulous about only filming scenes that could have been seen by two camera operators in the room at the time, at least in its early years. "Where is the camera and why would it be there?" are questions they seemed to ask on every shot, and we often see them shooting through window blinds or from across the street. They were thoughtful about it.
As it evolved on MODERN FAMILY, PARKS & REC, and now ABBOTT ELEMENTARY, I didn't really think of it as a mockumentary anymore. It's just a different way to break the fourth wall and address the audience directly, like Shakespeare and George Burns used to do. I haven't seen enough ABBOTT to say, but did they ever really establish the framing device that a documentary crew was on campus for the year? For me, it's less an impression of "camera operators in this room are watching us" than "people at home are watching us." I'm OK with it.
Why are there so many cop shows? Haven't they all been done before?
Why are there so many doctor shows? Haven't they all been done before?
.... lawyer .... lawyer....
If done right, they are entertaining.
Since when is Modern Family a mockumentary? They only talk when on the couch, they never acknowledge a camera or crew like Office/Parks. Arrested Development wasn't a mockumentary either. No interviews or camera stuff.
A suggestion for a very funny (and prescient) fake documentary: Albert Brooks' "REAL LIFE," a movie that concludes with a UPC.
With Modern Family, I guess I never really thought about it being a documentary or who was interviewing the family and why (maybe because I hadn't seen The Office yet and it was fresh to me). And they had some great jokes were in those interview scenes (the first few seasons).
Anybody remember the Fox drama, "Get Real"? More of a breaking the wall/voiceover thing. Watch the first five minutes of the pilot on youtube: I thought it was cool at the time but now it'd be really annoying to sit through. But it's fun to see Anne Hathaway and many other familiar faces.
The "Adventures of Dobie Gillis" had Dobie "narrating" each adventure; popping up here and there to comment on the action. "The Wonder Years" used voice-over narration from the grown up main character to add perspective and sometimes as a framing device.
"What We Do In The Shadows" continues to make it pay off, IMO. You'll start to forget about the mockumentary framing and then, suddenly, the cameraman will get attacked by a werewolf or something.
The British version of The Office did it right, yes. The documentary being filmed actually went out "on telly" while the filming continued. And there were immediate reactions from "viewers". On the American version, "viewers" never got the chance to react to the idiocy of Office Manager, Michael Scott. An unfortunate missed oportunity for the series.
There were mistakes made with the documentary crew on the American Office. In one episode, Michael locks everyone in the conference room. A "camera" films Michael on the outside of the office. The view is into the confetence room. We see all the office workers in there, upset. The scene switches to inside the conference room, so the camera is now with the office workers. But wait, previously when the camera was with Michael looking into the conference room, there was no camera or camera crew in the conference room. Mistakes like this were infrequent, but I noticed such mistakes in restaurant scenes, too.
I agree this device is now old and worn out. Time to move on or figure out a way to make it fresh, which I don't see happening.
Also, who is it that's watching if it isn't us, the actual audience? For the American version of The Office, I initially thought that I myself was watching the documentary. Turns out I wasn't since the actual documentary "premiered" on the show's final episode. Rather Twilight Zoney.
Maybe it's just an excuse to save money by shooting handheld vs with pedestals and dollies?
"Why are the camera shots wobbly?"
"ehhh... IT'S MOCUMENTARY STYLE! Shut up!"
The way-too-early-cancelled crime show "Life" sort of worked a mockumentary style into the stories. A camery crew followed the cop around.
Spoiler (for a 15 years old show): they died.
It bothered me in The Office, but I barely noticed it in Parks & Rec
Completely agree with Ken on this format being used to death for sitcoms. However, one of the funniest and best uses I've seen was Netflix's "Documentary Now" send-ups of real documentaries that have been done. The writing by Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Seth Meyers is first rate and the acting is terrific. Check it out if you have Netflix:
https://www.netflix.com/watch/81116951?trackId=255824129
I would refer you to Fleabag. Pheobe's character is always looking at the camera. There's one point when she is talking to a guy and he asks why she is always looking away (at the camera). She doesn't answer but it is a nod to the story telling conceit.
In a way the mockumentary style is similar to Gary Shandlings first shows where he talked directly to the audience.
What We Do In The Shadows takes the Mockumentary to another level when the vampires attack the sound guy.
In the end, the Mockumentary is just a useful device to tell a story.
I don't think Arrested Development counts. They had a narrator but it wasn't supposed to be a documentary.
Someone mentioned a mockumentary about making a mockumentary earlier. Albert Brooks did it in 1979, with Real Life. I love the moment when the family asks the film crew for help with their car and the film crew refuses because it's a documentary.
The David Steinberg Show (1976) was a largely Canadian series that featured fourth-wall breaking all the time. A lot of the SCTV people were involved with the show.
I think the intent is for the audience to feel like they're in on the jokes. I've been watching Abbott and really I don't think about it since the format has been well used over the years. Over-used? Probably.
But it's a funny show and having the setting in an inner-city school is ripe for plenty of material.
-- The mockumentary format doesn't bother me. I just view the action as if it were a normal single-camera comedy like "My Name is Earl", and I treat the interview parts as a breaking-the-fourth-wall aside, like with George Burns and Garry Shandling's sitcoms or even Shakespeare plays.
In fact, a mockumentary might be the only way to stage a military sitcom nowadays. I don't think a traditional three-camera sitcom like "Sgt. Bilko" would gain traction, but I could see a behind-the-scenes look at a base filled with Peter Principle-type officers and stymied staffers and infantry solders showing some potential.
-- @Brian Phillips: Here's another positive vote for "People Like Us", which I saw on BBC America (boy, I miss them showing actual BBC shows instead of "Star Trek: TNG" reruns). I remember a scene in a doctor's office, where a baby was about to get some shots. Once the nurse took out the needle, the off-camera interviewer fainted and crashed on the floor. Not only did the nurse and mother turn to the interviewer, so did the three-month-old baby; that infant sure showed promise as an actor.
Also, an episode featuring a realtor included a pre-"Coupling" Sarah Alexander as the subject's office crush. Very accurate; if I worked in the same place as Sarah Alexander, she would've been my big office crush. #swoon
As much as I enjoyed several of these shows, the aspect that always frustrated me is when the characters are out among regular people. They're being followed by cameras, and no one is glancing over? No one is saying, "What is going on?" No one is distracted from what they're doing?Sometimes a person will notice the camera in a dialogue with one of the main characters, like a cashier, but even then it doesn't really make sense. Everyone is nonchalant. If I were confronted in a restaurant or shopping center with a bunch of cameras filming two people at a table, I wouldn't be able to look away.
There's a very weird moment in "The Happiest Millionaire". Tommy Steele as the butler often breaks the fourth wall to narrate and, of course, sing. At one point Fred MacMurray asks who he's talking to. Steele hurries away, and MacMurray steps towards the lens and stares into it uncomfortably. Very off moment in an insistently conventional Disney flick.
In the American "Office" the documentary crew was usually as abstract a device as Steele talking to the camera. Calling attention to it and even incorporating it into the plots was MacMurray staring into the lens.
Not sure if this counts, but I believe the first film to utilize this was Lady in the Lake (1946) with Robert Montgomery, based on the Raymond Chandler story. It was done in first-person style, from Phillip Marlowe's POV.
Regarding Zelig, visiting my parents once (in their mid 70s at the time) my father began telling me about a documentary they had watched. It sounded familiar. My father related how the main person in the doc had once lived in an apartment above a bowling alley. Astoundingly, the workers from the bowling alley would often have to climb the stairs and pound on the apartment door, asking that the family there keep the noise down. I believe my Mom knew, but didn't want to embarass my Dad.
Yet another "thumbs up" for the TV version of John Morton's surprising, witty, impeccably-performed "People Like Us." The episode "The Journalist" being one of my favorite comedy segments of all time ("The Actor" and "The Managing Director" are really good, too) When amazon first made the series available on DVD I snapped it up almost immediately. Check it out.
Regarding "found footage", sometimes the film makers don't understand how it should work. A few seasons ago, Doctor Who (a favorite of mine) attempted the format. They even eliminated the opening credits to make the episode "real". Thing is, the story was taking place on a space station in the far future. So exactly how were we viewers in the 21st century supposed to be seeing this? At the episodes end, the episodes "monster alien" even looked right into the camera and threatened we viewers. Again, he was speaking from the far future. Made no sense.
I sort of thought on Parks and Recreation the talking heads were supposed to indicate what the characters were thinking while they were doing their scenes, especially since no mention was ever made of there being a camera crew and there seemed to be no other reason to do it mockumentary style. Except lazy writing.
I wonder how much the average viewer thinks about the show being in the mockumentary format. I don't think I give the average viewer a lot of credit.
What about a mockumentary as told from the perspective of the film crew following a family or an office setting or something?
Even as great as the Christopher Guest films are, they show the limits. There's a scene in Waiting For Guffman where the main character is by himself in the tub (maybe crying?...been a long time) and there's no way the camera would be there.
I feel that format has to be cheaper to do, but I get real tired of watching a show with the camera strapped to the head of a monkey.
You beat me too it. "Real Life" was not only funny, but prescient as well.
M.B.
I'm 0 for 2. I was also going to bring up, "It's Garry Shandling's Show."
M.B.
I should point out that the narrator in Arrested Development is Ron Howard.
I can't stand the shaky-cam constant zooming. I remember watching a short film about 12 years ago that used this effect, and I thought I was gonna end up with motion sickness.
Agreed, Ken. Sometimes the mockumentary format works... but it has to be taken seriously by the producers, directors and writers, and they need to stay consistent and real with it. Going on and on with 'shooting' for years, or depicting things such as characters' internal fantasies, or introducing cinematography and other camera work/Hollywood SFX trickery that would never be affordable or within the ability of a documentary crew, all violate the format.
Having said that, Nicole Kidman's great early film To Die For, from 1996, starts off as a mockumentary, seems to forget the format as it goes along, returns to a documentary approach near the end, then seems to finally abandon it in the final scene. It's such a great, compelling film (and Nicole is so delicious in her nasty villain role) that the lapses are forgivable, but that's the exception to the rule IMHO.
Lisa Kudrow's THE COMEBACK on HBO was a mockumentary of a documentary of a sitcom. Way ahead of the curve and funny.
"The Rookie" has done two episodes where the characters are interviewed for some "true crime" TV show concerning a completed case. Clips and "reenactment" scenes in that low-rent documentary style.
The show's creators must have received enough positive feedback from the first episode done this way to do it all again. For me, they were so irritating and stupid as to be nearly unwatchable.
(Actually, this fourth season of "The Rookie" is in a downward spiral. Completely unsurprising this fumble-stumble would happen once Nathan Fillion's character stopped being a rookie.)
It's unnecessary to type "IMO," or "IMHO." It's a given.
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT was, indeed, supposed to be a documentary. There was one scene where the judge wouldn't allow cameras in the courtroom, and immediately the documentary camera crew went behind the doors as they closed. Another time, the Bluths were having a meeting with their lawyer. Then wanted to make sure there were no listening devices before they started. Immediately, the camera showed the boom mic for the documentary (as well as the stand-in for George Bluth, who was set up to be George's eyes and ears electronically - though that part wasn't relevant to the documentary itself). There was also the occasional use of security camera footage which a real crew might use when the show's crew wouldn't have that footage themselves.
The reason (I'm surmising here) the Bluths don't seem to acknowledge a camera crew is that those people were oblivious in all things, which would include being filmed all the time. On the other hand, both David Brent and Michael Scott saw themselves as entertainers, thus played to the cameras a lot. Also, Jim Halpert (and, to a lesser degree, Tim Canterbury) saw themselves as the audience's POV, thus the "Jim looks". And Dwight was being... Dwight.
I feel like FLEABAG's use of asides was not a mockumentary in the sense that these others were. Among other things, the show began as an on-stage monologue in which the character alternated between talking to unseen others and commenting to use in asides. The show attempted to translate *that*, with the other characters now visible.
It was significant that the priest was the only other character perspicacious enough to notice when she went off into her own head (ie, talk to us).
wg
Netflix have announced a new reality dating show, "Jewish Matchmaking."
I cannot wait for your eventual review.
The worst use of the Mockumentary format was the Michael J. Fox show, which otherwise was just a standard single camera sitcom, but they would still have the congressional booths that shows like the Office would have. If I remember (because it's been 9 years), the first episode justified it by having the daughter making a video at home, but the rest of the show just continued to use it despite that there was no attempt at justifying the conceit.
With Parks and Rec, I think it was meant to be a mockumentary like The Office initially, but eventually it just became a show they shot verite style with characters occasionally talking to camera... just because. There isn't a camera crew filming them in the universe of the show. (Not only do we never see them, but the "rules" for how the camera is used is way more god-like than on The Office, where everything is tethered to a camera crew.
Presumably the talking to camera is a way of having them talk about their inner monologues. It's just an affectation, like voiceover narration (where people talk at greater length or detail than they ever would in recounting events unless they're writing everything that happened to them for the New Yorker).
It doesn't bother me. So many things are ridiculous on sit-coms. Amazon video ran the first season of Burns & Allen. That is the first time I have seen it done and that was early. It went way further than most modern sit-coms.
This is a bit off-topic, but was anyone else bothered by the framing device for "How I Met Your Mother," in which he's telling his teen children about the sexual escapades of himself and his friends to get around to, what would have been hours later, the actual reason for the conservation?
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