The 7 Best Mockumentary TV Shows Of All Time, Ranked
Here are some of our absolute favorite mockumentary comedy shows, ranked in order from worst to best.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that we’re currently living in the golden age of mockumentary television.
With the success of The Office helping elevate the genre to mainstream prominence, the past two decades have ushered in a variety of memorable mockumentary programs that have quickly captured audiences’ attention, be it in the form of riotous Cops parodies or inventive explorations of small-town government agencies.
Just as audiences continually flock to genre-defining films like This Is Spinal Tap or Borat, mainstream viewers today tend to look back fondly on certain past mockumentary TV series from the genre’s past. From rowdy Canadian crime capers to inventive vampire spoofs, here are some of our absolute favorite mockumentary comedy shows, ranked in order from worst to best.
7. Reno 911!
Police shows are a dime a dozen in the television industry, but few have effectively toyed with the genre quite like Reno 911! An out and out spoof of the long-running series Cops, Reno 911! provides a look at the motley crew of the Reno’s Sheriff Department: an inept, hilariously ineffective law enforcement agency tasked with policing The Biggest Little City in the World. Characterized by racy, distinctly non-PC humor and an extensive lineup of comedian guest stars, Reno 911! is the perfect answer to the increasingly formulaic police procedural series debuting to network television, appealing to anyone in search of a hearty belly laugh.
6. Trailer Park Boys
That Trailer Park Boys spans two shows, four films, and two spinoffs should tell viewers all they need to know about this popular Canadian mockumentary series. Set at an average trailer park residence in the Great White North, Trailer Park Boys traces three small-time criminals’ misadventures and half-baked money-making schemes, each of which inevitably catch the attention of their park’s hard-drinking supervisor. While perhaps a bit on the lowbrow side for some, Trailer Park Boys’ approachable and unpretentious comedy will leave most viewers giggling for days on end, be it at the expense of the foul-mouthed Ricky or the perpetually inebriated Jim Lahey.
5. What We Do in the Shadows
After earning rave reviews upon its release in 2014, Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows provided the inspiration for a full-fledged television spin-off with its 2019 FX adaptation. Transposing its original New Zealand settings for grim and gritty Staten Island, What We Do in the Shadows’ continues Clement and Waititi’s profound ability to openly mock the cliches surrounding horror’s infamous creatures of the night, complete with a long list of random celebrity cameos (Dave Bautista, Tilda Swinton, Fred Armisen, Wesley Snipes, and Mark Hamill, among many others).
4. Abbott Elementary
One of the newest mockumentaries series to premiere on primetime television, Abbott Elementary has more than earned its reputation as one of the most noteworthy comedies in recent memory. Set in an underfunded and understaffed Philadelphia elementary school, Abbott Elementary balances out its infectious humor and agreeable characters with a moving exploration of race and income inequality in the modern U.S.: an all too relevant topic in the modern day and age.
3. Modern Family
Family sitcoms have been around practically since the advent of television itself. However, few series have truly reconfigured the traditional family-oriented situational comedy quite like Modern Family. Adopting an off-beat mockumentary approach pioneered by The Office before it, Modern Family brilliantly explores the dynamics that make up America’s contemporary households, as seen through its depiction of a stereotypical suburban family (the Dunphys), a blended family (the Delgado-Pritchetts), and a same-sex family (the Tucker-Pritchetts).
2. Parks and Recreation
Whoever said you can’t catch lightning in a bottle twice clearly hasn’t seen Parks and Recreation. After making a splash with the American remake of The Office, showrunners Greg Daniels and Michael Schur turned their attention from the windswept streets of Scranton to the rolling pastures of Indiana with their stylistic follow-up. Swapping out corporate America for local government parks departments, Parks and Recreation managed to rise to the same comedic heights as its spiritual successor in The Office, right down to a cast of similarly eccentric characters like Leslie Knope, Andy Dwyer, April Ludgate, and Nick Offerman’s fan-favorite Ron Swanson.
1. The Office
More so than any other show on this list, The Office helped cement the mockumentary series as a viable genre in mainstream American television. Though based in part on Ricky Gervais’s dry-witted 2001 British sitcom, The Office quickly adapted itself to its new American settings by its second season, ushering in a series dramatically different from – and arguably better than – its U.K. source material. Reinventing the workplace comedy for an entirely new generation, The Office eloquently satirized the daily minutiae of an average corporate building, from the complexities of interoffice relationships to navigating a woefully immature boss like Michael Scott.
