The future of the mockumentary: Is it still relevant today?

What y'all think about this little film crew I brought in here? Distracting, makes our jobs harder. But exciting, we about to be on TV. Because they are covering underfunded, poorly managed public schools in America. Abbott Elementary debuted on December of 2021, and when it first became clear the show was a mockumentary, it was hard not to be skeptical. Series like The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Modern Family had long since run the format into the ground, and it was difficult to believe there was still anything worthwhile left to wring from the genre's tired cliches. But much to everyone's surprise, Abbott Elementary didn't feel tired or cliche. It changed up the formula in some subtle but important ways, and in the process, it saved the mockumentary sitcom. Oh, don't ever come out with me in Fiji. No, I won't. Oh, you've got to go. There's guys my age, and they look 50. How old do you think I look? 30. 30, yeah. Yeah. The original British version of The Office debuted in 2001, and though it didn't invent the mockumentary sitcom, it was arguably the first show to perfect it. Using the hallmarks of documentary filmmaking, including talking head interviews, moments that break the fourth wall, and a cinema verite-ish style of shooting, The Office blurred the line between fiction and reality in a way that highlighted its themes and heightened its comedy, which was largely of the cringe variety. The UK Office wasn't a huge success in its initial run, but it was genuinely different from most other sitcoms of its era. And that eventually earned it a big following, as well as an American remake. That series debuted in 2005 and ran for nine seasons. Noting its success, Hollywood predictably started cranking out more mockumentary sitcoms, including now classic shows like Parks and Rec, Reno 911, and Modern Family. Of course, as the number of such series increased, the novelty decreased. It was also hard not to notice that the shows themselves placed increasingly less importance on their documentary aspect. Both Parks and Rec and Modern Family, for example, regularly strained their audience's credulity when it came to the omnipresence of the film crews, and neither series even bothered to explain who was doing the filming, or why, or why they kept filming for years on end. We lost our baby in the car and people are judging us. I swear to God, I'm gonna break- Those shows never dealt with those questions because they didn't really matter to the stories being told. But the more apparent it became that the documentary framing was just a stylistic affectation, the more the whole conceit began to feel unnecessary. The tropes of the mockumentary calcified into cliches, and audiences lost interest in the genre. Producers kept trying to milk the format with series like Zach Stone is Gonna Be Famous, which debuted in 2013, as well as The Comedians and The Muppets, both of which dropped in 2015. But none of them lasted more than a season, so when Modern Family ended its run in 2020, it felt like the end of an era. And had it followed the traditional blueprint, Abbott Elementary, which debuted just one year later, easily could have gone down as just another name on that list of failed office wannabes. Created by Quinta Brunson, the series focuses on idealistic second grade teacher Janine Teagues, played by Brunson herself. Along with her colleagues, she fights to make things work at the criminally underfunded Titular School, which is located in a low-income and largely African-American area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Originally conceived as an animated show, Brunson decided to switch it to live-action after partnering with office director Randall Einhorn. But even before he came on board, Brunson wanted Abbott to be a mockumentary. Given the state of the format, that decision was something of a risk. And in its early days, the show did have to struggle with the deflated expectations left behind by previous entries in the genre, but it didn't take long for audiences to start to notice what Abbott was doing differently. Of course, sitcoms set at public schools are nothing new, but Abbott is among the first to apply a mockumentary format to the setting. Right off the bat, that set it apart from both other school shows and other mockumentaries, and it made it feel fresh. Abbott was also very upfront about the reason behind its mockumentary conceit. That's because, according to Brunson, she's a fan of the format and considers it ideal for jokes, but only if there's a real reason to use it. As explained in the pilot, the camera crew is there to document America's underfunded and poorly managed public school system. It's a far more believable subject matter for a long-running documentary than a boring office in Scranton or some random family living in suburban Los Angeles. And as such, it serves as a far better justification for the mockumentary format. At the same time, the series didn't want to get too meta when it comes to that format. Yes, the documentary crew is occasionally mentioned. The show, for example, lampshaded the months of the school year they missed due to a writer's strike with a joke about how the camera crew got robbed and lost their equipment. So they got robbed because they thought it'd be cute to walk around West Philly at night with all this camera equipment. Anyway, here we are five months later because that's how long it takes for three people with art degrees to save up for new cameras. But otherwise, the focus is overwhelmingly on the teachers, and fans of The Office need not fear anything like what happened with Brian the sound guy. Moreover, the visual template set by Einhorn, who directed the series' first four episodes, also serves the format more than the usual mockumentary cinematography. On Abbott, the cameras move around a lot more than they tend to do on similar shows, lending more credence to the idea that you're watching footage that was spontaneously captured on the go. And the talking head interviews only rarely feature the characters sitting comfortably and talking to the camera in a perfect shot. Instead, the cameras do things like subtly tilting down for shorter characters, and up for taller ones. It's an imperfection that furthers the illusion that these interviews are being conducted on the fly with busy people in a busy environment. But the more realistic use of the camera is really just the beginning. Abbott also shakes things up through its choice of Janine as its main character. Most other successful mockumentary sitcoms centered on a singular larger-than-life personality like David Brent, Michael Scott, or Leslie Knope. And that's because the format risks feeling boring without having someone like that around to constantly drive the action, especially when the setting is something as dull and low stakes as a paper company or a local parks department. If they had gone with the usual model, Janelle James' egomaniacal principal Ava Coleman would be the natural main character. Come on, hurry up. Who knows when those kids will start arriving? They get here at 7.30. Every day? That's wild. But Janine is cut from the same cloth as most traditional sitcom protagonists. Compassionate and down-to-earth, she's the kind of main character who functions as a relatable proxy for the audience and an ideal anchor for an eccentric ensemble. It's the kind of thing Abbott can get away with because, unlike most other mockumentary sitcoms, its setting comes with some almost all-too-real stakes already built right in. Starved for budget, the school is literally falling apart. The future of hundreds, if not thousands of children, are on the line, and few faculty members who weren't driven off by the poor conditions spend their days struggling to provide them with an adequate education. As a result, the series regularly engages with education-related issues like overcrowded classrooms, school supply shortages, insufficient accommodations for disabled students, and the financial fallout of charter schools, low salary for faculty, conflicts between parents and teachers, racism in the classroom, and the toll all of these problems can take on a teacher's mental health. that willingness to tackle the kind of real-world problems that are usually reserved for dramas is yet another quality that sets Abbott apart from other mockumentaries. At the same time, it frees the series up to differentiate itself through its tone and mode of humor. Taking their cues from The Office's cringe comedy model, many of the most successful mockumentary sitcoms found their laughs by reveling in the typically uncomfortable moments of an average workday that everyone, in one sense or another, has been forced to endure. But thanks to its real-world stakes, Abbott Elementary earns most of its laughs through its character's seemingly unconquerable sincerity. Oh, do you hear that? Optimism wins again! It's easy to be amused when Janine decides to fix one of the school's broken toilets by herself only to be sprayed with a jet of toilet water, or when she blacks out the whole school while trying to repair a light fixture. But in the end, she's a character we can relate to who's fighting the good fight, and that makes her hard not to root for. The same goes for Janine's colleagues, who, like most of the school's student body, are mostly African-American. It makes Abbott the incredibly rare mockumentary that focuses on Black characters and Black perspectives. One episode in season one, for example, features Janine teaching her class a lesson using African-American vernacular English, which Janine calls Philadelphia slang, and recognizes as the language her students speak within their day-to-day lives. Okay, let's move on to Ard, which means all right. They're all relatively small touches, but put them together. The fresh setting, the superior use of the format, the more relatable main character, the willingness to engage with real-world issues that have recognizable stakes, the reliance on sincerity rather than awkwardness, and the representation of a community typically underserved by the genre. And you have a show unlike any other of its kind. Why are you breathing so hard? I'm excited. Well, it's weird. You should get that checked out. Okay. The point is, Abbott Elementary managed to breathe new life in the mockumentary sitcom by subverting much of what we've come to expect of it. It successfully refocused the whole format to tell a different kind of story about different kinds of characters. And for everyone who thought the format was dead, it turned out to be a real lesson.