A good mockumentary is the bread and butter of comedy nowadays. No other medium is quite able to capture the absurdity of daily life like it. It all feels more real. Characters naturally respond to events and situations. In fact, one could argue mockumentaries are the modern sitcom.
But, are they more successful as films or television shows? In both, there are countless success stories. Today, it's time to chart the differences and get a sense of which medium might be better for the mockumentary style. All in all, it's simply a matter of taste. Film versus TV Mockumentaries are more different in style and execution than anything else, but certainly not in quality.
10 Mockumentary Movies Aren't Limited to 25-60 Minute Long Episodes
The nice part of movies is that they do not have to feel limited by a programming block. Typically, a TV show is no longer than an hour per episode. For most comedy shows, this is even less. That means movies have more time to explore a singular plotline in one sitting.
Movie Mockumentaries don't need to rely on viewer's memory of previous episodes or gags. They keep attention from start to finish and ask to be finished. TV Shows can eventually feel formulaic and repetitive. That rarely happens in a well-made mockumentary film.
9 Mockumentary TV Shows Are Easier Bit-Sized Chunks
On the counter, mockumentary TV shows are often easier to take in smaller chunks. That means in 25 minutes, viewers know they will get all the hilarious cut-aways, gags, and a full plotline. While each episode is shorter, it makes up for this by moving at break-neck speeds.
A movie would take upwards of 90 minutes to do what a TV show can do in 25 minutes. In the modern age of entertainment, not everyone has time to sit down for ninety minutes uninterrupted for a silly film.
8 Mockumentary Movies Have Tighter Structure
Movies are tighter in structure overall. With a mockumentary film, a clear process needs to follow. The characters need to be introduced. The conflict and reason this is being filmed have to be established. The gags have to land and build. And then the story needs to resolve.
Every mockumentary film follows this structure with little deviation. Otherwise, viewers are left wondering "why should we care about this Kazakhstani guy in the U.S.?" and end up missing all the comedy in the process.
7 Mockumentary TV Shows Are Longer Overall
There can be a lot more plot and character development in a Mockumentary TV show that just otherwise would not be in a movie.
After all, most people don't want to sit through a four-day-long mockumentary in theaters. Then again, we all know those diehard Office fans who would be willing to do just that.
6 Mockumentary Movies Have Better Individual Gags
A movie has 90-minutes to show why it's worth the viewer's time. Otherwise, it will be forgotten. Therefore, mockumentary movies are often bigger, bolder, and better with their jokes than their TV counterparts. Movies can afford the big set pieces and chaos. And the success of the narrative relies strongly on these scenes, so writers and directors of mockumentaries make sure they are good.
TV shows work on smaller budgets and often save bigger gags for the end of the season. Take What We Do In The Shadows for instance. The big vampire gathering didn't happen until the end of the season. The movie had that, werewolves, and gallons of blood all in a quick time span.
5 Mockumentary TV Shows Build Recurring Bits & Gags
The thing movies cannot do to the same success as TV shows is build recurring bits and gags. With a mockumentary TV show, viewers get to see the development of jokes over time. Take all the pranks on Dwight in The Office. What starts with small gags quickly grows in size and scope so that by the end of the show, it's boarding on absurdist humor.
A movie would only have time to show this back-to-back and none of the other things that happen in The Office. And the joke never gets old because viewers have time to step away week to week (assuming they aren't binging) and wait in eager anticipation for the next time it happens.
4 Mockumentary Movies Have More Genres & Styles
Movies have the fortune of getting to be more experimental in genre and style. They aren't limited to being strict "comedies" like most TV shows are. TV shows have to have wider appeal and the ability to have longer character-driven plotlines.
Mockumentary films give an opportunity for horror films like The Blair Witch Project or Lake Mungo to use mockumentary style to build tension, rather than laughs. Similarly, it can even be used in drama films like Man Bites Dog or District Nine. Viewers have yet to see this really in TV shows.
3 Mockumentary TV Shows Have More Room For Experimentation
The nice part with having episodes is that, often, TV shows are more open to experimentation. In that, if they feel like creating a horror episode, they are more than welcome to. TV shows can play around with jokes and gags, seeing what sticks and what doesn't.
Movies are locked into a strict structure and cannot play around as much. TV show mockumentaries can spend entire episodes following around side characters or entirely dissecting the genre as a whole. If it fails, they simply go back to the formula next episode.
2 Mockumentary Movies Have More Emotional Relevance
Often, Mockumentary movies have a much larger sense of emotional relevance, in that they often have more to say about the human condition and society as a whole. That is usually the point of these films beyond immediate laughs.
They provide a grander insight into the reality of human emotion than non-fiction documentaries often can. Not saying television shows also cannot do this, but they often lack that immediate purpose focusing more on the comedy and less on the point of it all due to time constraints
1 Mockumentary TV Shows Have More Time To Develop Characters
Mockumentary TV shows might not have as many emotional plotlines, but they do have time to develop emotional in-depth characters. Whereas a film has a limited time to see a character grow, a TV show can take seasons to watch as someone develops. A great example of this is the Modern Family series where viewers quite literally watch the family grow up and develop.
The characters' dynamics change throughout the seasons, especially the children, who start to grow into adulthood by the end of the series. Viewers certainly grow closer to that family through multiple seasons than they can with a ninety-minute film.
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