The Ultimate Mockumentary Quiz

Mockumentary: A Genre of Fictional Events Presented in Documentary Style

• Mockumentary is a type of film or TV show that presents fictional events in the form of a documentary.
• It is often used to comment on current events or parody the documentary form itself.
• Mockumentaries are usually comedic, while their dramatic equivalents are called pseudo-documentaries.
• Mockumentaries can be partly or wholly improvised.
• Early examples of mock-documentaries include films by Peter Watkins, Federico Fellini’s The Clowns, and Albert Brooks's Real Life.
• The style of Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run was widely appropriated by others and revisited by Allen himself in films such as Zelig and Sweet and Lowdown.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus also featured mockumentary pieces, such as "Hell's Grannies", "Piranha Brothers", and "The Funniest Joke in the World".
• The 1980 South African film The Gods Must Be Crazy and Woody Allen's Zelig are early examples of mockumentaries that gained considerable attention.
• Christopher Guest's This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind are mockumentaries that he co-wrote and directed.
• Since the 2000s, notable mockumentaries include The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Modern Family in the US, and The Games, Trailer Park Boys, and W1A in the UK.
• The series Documentary Now! spoofs celebrated documentary films by parodying the style and subject of each documentary.
• The BBC series Cunk on Britain and Cunk on Earth created by Diane Morgan is a mockumentary about British history with experts asking ridiculous questions.
• People Like Us and Kay Stonham's Audio Diaries are radio mockumentaries.