Rise of the Talking Heads: Charting The Rise Of The TV Mockumentary Comedy

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When The Office first came across the pond, it seemed dead on arrival. The insufferable nature of Gervais’ main character just didn’t translate to Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott and the plan to lift dialogue straight from its predecessor meant jokes often fell flat. It’s only when showrunner Greg Daniels suggested they lean into the likability of a cast that included Carrell, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, and Rainn Wilson, that the show found its groove.

“That thing was like a boot camp in learning how to write a mockumentary,” writer Dan Goor tells us. Goor would spend a short stint on the show before transitioning to Parks and Rec (and eventually, heading Brooklyn Nine-Nine). “It created a trend in sitcoms.”

At the very least, it opened the door for others to experiment with the shooting style. Goor and showrunner Michael Schur would employ some of the same techniques that endeared audiences to the employees of Dunder Mifflin in their government-centric follow-up.

“[The Office] really had a theory about how to use talking heads,” he explains. “You could use them as a shortcut for getting exposition out, because a person could literally narrate what was happening and there was comedy in that. That’s a huge advantage, especially on a show like Parks and Rec, which was about a world that people aren’t familiar with.”

This messier style of shooting also felt far-removed from the multi-cam sitcoms that had previously dominated network comedy. Shows like Friends, Cheers, and Everybody Loves Raymond were housed on well-lit stages in front of studio audiences with laugh-tracks that dictated where jokes would land. There were clear boundaries – the actors were playing to viewers, unlike mockumentaries that invited fans to feel part of the scene. Seinfeld worked to bridge that gap in many ways, slowly transitioning away from the tried-and-true model. Veep showrunner David Mandel got his start working on the show, arriving in the show’s later seasons.

“Even though it was technically a multi-cam sitcom being shot on a stage with an audience, there were huge sections of the show, week in week out, that were being shot elsewhere, as exteriors or more complicated sets,” he shares. “So, it practically was already almost like a single cam hybrid by the back end of it, even though no one was calling it that.”

Single cam may give comedy a more cinematic feel, but that’s not what appeals to mockumentary fans, or the people who create them. Looser scripts, more room for improv, and the ability to punch up the humor through quick-paced editing are all advantages of the genre.

“I think it gives you more of those moments where you can see genuine reactions from people,” says Jimmy Tatro, who’s worked on shows like Netflix’s American Vandal and created his own reality satire Real Bros of Simi Valley. “One of the cool things about American Vandal is, I wouldn’t know what they were going to ask me in the interviews, so they would get a genuine reaction from me hearing the question for the first time. I think that ad-libbing in general, it does make these things feel more real. It gives them more of an authentic vibe, more of a raw feel.”

The Office, much like the Netflix true-crime parody, would eventually evolve to become a commentary on the mockumentary genre itself, introducing fans to members of the crew that had been “shooting” the series and suggesting relationships had been formed off-camera that viewers had no idea about.

But the success of the series also meant that shows like Parks and Rec would have to evolve too. Goor says crafting a copy-cat of the workplace comedy wouldn’t have worked. Instead, Schur’s follow-up cherry-picked the best of the genre and slowly shrugged off the meta. The show’s characters still gave lively confessionals,— though those began to teeter off as fans became more familiar with the inner-working of Pawnee’s government — but eventually, the mock-doc’s presence could only be gleaned whenever Adam Scott’s character would raise a questioning brow or Aziz Ansari would direct a surprised smile to the camera.

What stuck was the use of the camera as simply another character – one that could whip, float, or accentuate a joke by directing our view to a certain interaction. Believing these shows were shot as documentaries meant creators could play a bit loose with continuity, the camera could miss something and have it be excusable.