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Mockumentary: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"October 30, 1938, New York City: [[Orson Welles]] broadcasts ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]'', sending the nation into panic over a supposed alien invasion. Amazed by its success, Welles planned an ambitious follow-up: an innovative radio adaptation of [[Walt Whitman]]'s ''Leaves of Grass'', in which the famed poem is expressed in a series of fake news bulletins and incredible sound effects (the majestic "yawp" is accomplished using a glass bottle and a balloon). Listeners fall for it again: Across America, hysterical citizens run through the streets singing the body electric, and falling in love with teenage boys."''|'''''[[More Information Than You Require]]'''''}}
A fictional drama that poses as a documentary. When not an outright comedy (such as ''[[This Is Spinal Tap]]''), the Mockumentary almost always involves some kind of disaster (even the BBC's recent one about a space voyage involved a crew member dying). Fake news reports done by real life newsreaders are common, along with interviews with 'experts', real or fictional. A Mockumentary will often provoke controversy.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* Entire show examples:
** ''[[Reno 911!]]'', a specific parody of the ''[[
** Canadian comedy series ''[[Trailer Park Boys]]'' has the premise of being a documentary that follows the day-to-day lives of several guys who live in a trailer park. Occasionally, even the "film crew" gets involved, such as when the mike boom guy takes a stray bullet in the leg.
** ''[[The Office]]'' and all its imitators, including the German counterpart ''[[Stromberg]]''.
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* ''Life Beyond The Box'' was a series of two [[The BBC|BBC]] mockumentaries looking at the lives of 1970s sitcom characters [[Porridge|Norman Stanley Fletcher]] and [[The Good Life|Margot Leadbetter]]. The former reunited the cast of the original; the latter didn't, with even Margot herself being [[The Other Darrin|Other Darrined]].
* A British news show in the '50s played an April Fool on its audience, doing a segment about how spaghetti grows on trees. Pasta not being a common foodstuff there at the time, a lot of British viewers had no clue it was fake, and phoned the BBC to ask how they could grow their own spaghetti trees.
* ''Operation Repo'' is a series on TruTV] that is about repomen and it is filmed like [[
* One of the earlier examples: ''[[The Rutles]]: All You Need is Cash'', mocking documentaries of The Beatles, and one of Rob Reiner's inspirations for [[Spinal Tap]].
* ''[[Lost Tapes]]'' plays at being the tapes of people who encountered cryptozoological monsters—few of whom to survive the encounters.
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* Many, if not all of the ''[[Top Gear]]'' Challenges. Crossing a dessert in Africa or a reaching the North Pole in a car appear as very genuine documentaries about cars in extreme environments. But then you have others that include things like Jeremy hilariously rolling over a car in the background of a live news broadcast or the Stig falling with a car from the deck of an aircraft carrier and dying. Or the one in which they tried to test cars for their usefulnes as getaway cars and robbed a bank in Croatia and got in a chase with the police during which James died by jumping of a cliff, only to be back the next episode.
* The [[Animal Planet]] documentary ''[[Mermaids]], about the fictional discovery of a mermaid-like body and the supposed science behind it.
* ''[[X-Files]]'' had the episode ''X-Cops'', which was an episode done in the format of the ''[[
== [[Radio]] ==
* ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]'' (1938): This [[Trope Maker]] was a [[Radio Drama]] adaptation of the HG Wells novel, written and directed by Orson Welles as part of his Mercury Theatre of the Air program on CBS radio. The first half of the program was presented as a [[Phony Newscast]], the overwhelming versimilitude of which - coupled with heightened public anxiety over the prospect of war in Europe - resulted in many listeners believing the play to be an actual news broadcast on a Martian invasion. The resulting panic, though not nearly as wide-ranging or destructive as legend would later have it, boosted Welles' career and resulted in numerous FCC regulations requiring disclaimers in future mockumentaries.
* ''[[I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue]]: In Search of Mornington Crescent'', in which BBC reporter Andrew Marr talks to great players of the Game from Humphrey Lyttelton to Dame [[Judi Dench]] in order to learn why the rules are [[Calvin Ball|so hard to discover]].
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