8 /10 1 Votes
94% Rotten Tomatoes Genre Mockumentary Theme music composer Josh Moshier First episode date 20 August 2015 | 8.1/10 IMDb 6.8/10 TV Directed by Rhys Thomas
Alex Buono Country of origin United States Presented by Helen Mirren | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Created by Fred Armisen
Bill Hader
Seth Meyers
Rhys Thomas Starring Fred Armisen
Bill Hader Writers Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, Seth Meyers Cast Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Helen Mirren Profiles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Documentary now official trailer ft fred armisen bill hader ifc
Documentary Now! is an American mockumentary television series on IFC, created by Saturday Night Live alumni Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and director Rhys Thomas, with Armisen and Hader starring in the series and Thomas co-directing. The series spoofs celebrated documentary films by parodying the style of each documentary with a similar, but fictitious, subject. Helen Mirren serves as host for the series, which is executive produced by Armisen, Hader, Meyers, Thomas and SNL creator Lorne Michaels. The episode "DRONEZ: The Hunt for El Chingon" premiered online on August 10, 2015, followed by the regular television premiere on August 20. The series has been renewed through season 3.
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Development
On March 20, 2014, the series was announced under the working title American Documentary. Documentary Now! parodies well-known documentaries—such as The Thin Blue Line and Grey Gardens—but with fictitious subjects. British actress Helen Mirren serves as the host for the series, to add "gravitas" to each documentary. Each of the seven episodes is shot using different styles of documentary filmmaking, and "honors some of the most important stories that didn't actually happen."
The idea for the series was born on Saturday Night Live, where Armisen, Hader and Meyers were former cast members; in 2013, Armisen and Hader portrayed faded British punk rock stars in a segment, Ian Rubbish and the Bizzaros: History of Punk, made in the style of This Is Spinal Tap.
Premise
Within the universe of the show itself, Documentary Now! is a long-running news magazine for documentaries, initially celebrating its 50th season. Mirren appears at the beginning of each episode to introduce the documentary that the audience is about to see.
Hader and Armisen usually each play a lead or a prominent supporting character in each episode's documentary, though neither appear in every episode. Otherwise, the cast is entirely different from one episode to the next. The end credits are also made to appear as though they are the credits for the documentary, and not for the show itself.
Production
The producers made it a priority to realistically spoof famed documentaries, even going so far as to track down the original 1920s-era camera lenses used to film Nanook of the North (1922). They declined to do another Spinal Tap-type mockumentary and consciously avoided any similarities in editing or style. “Spinal Tap set such a great precedent that we had to watch out for repeating any of those same beats," Armisen said. "It’s one of the greatest movies ever.”
The six-episode order limited the first season of the show, Seth Meyers told Collider.com, stating that they were not able to spoof Michael Moore documentaries, or the phenomenally successful HBO miniseries The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. “The Jinx happened a little too late for us," Meyers said of the miniseries, which aired in February and March 2015. "We almost tried to pull it off. We talked a lot about that kind of documentary, where the filmmaker sets out to make a documentary, and then, very slowly, it becomes clear the documentary is about himself.”
Two of the episodes were shot in Iceland and The Hunt for El Chingon was filmed in Tijuana. To film the second-season episode "Final Transmission", the Documentary Now! crew staged a real-life concert (attracting around 1,000 people) in which Armisen, Hader, and guest star Maya Rudolph performed as the Talking Heads-inspired band the episode centers around.
Reception
In its year-end roundup, the New York Times named Documentary Now! as one of "The Best TV Shows of 2015". "This series, introduced in August," wrote Times critic Neil Genzlinger, "consists not of actual documentaries but of parodies of actual documentaries. It sure is funny, though." The series has earned a 94% rating on the review site Rotten Tomatoes.