Parodies Don’t Get More Loving Than ‘Documentary Now!’

by Splitsider

If you are a person who has an encyclopedic knowledge of documentary film and has been anxiously awaiting a solid Errol Morris parody to hit the (sort of) mainstream, you are in luck: IFC’s niche-y, meticulously detailed Documentary Now! is the ode to the genre you’ve been waiting for.

But I am not that person, and I am also in luck, because Documentary Now! is also the documentary parody series I didn’t know I wanted. IFC seems confident that I am not alone in this — before the first episode even aired, the show was picked up for second and third seasons.

In each episode, creators and SNL comrades-in-arms Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and Rhys Thomas affectionately satirize a different iconic documentary (Grey Gardens, The Thin Blue Line, the entire Vice News macho-hipster-whiskey-plaid milieu). Because they are all installments in the fake 50th season of the fake PBS documentary retrospective, they are all introduced with tremendous gravitas by a very dignified Helen Mirren wearing a very dignified asymmetrical neckline. Every show — in a panel hosted by The Atlantic, Armisen suggested that they’re not “mockumentaries” so much as “celebrations” of the form, so we’ll go with that — stars Armisen and Hader (Meyers writes many, though not all of them, and Thomas directs with Alexander Buono) plus or minus various guests (John Slattery, Jack Black, and Aidy Bryant, among others).

But while the episodes are all mocking/celebrating something different, they are united by their extreme specificity. Each installment references its source material with the surgical precision of, I don’t know, surgery, or perhaps pairs figure skating: if you had any doubt that the satire is affectionate, here is the evidence. These guys really, really like documentaries.

Read the rest at Splitsider.