# What is the best mockumentary TV series of all time?

> Talking heads, awkward pauses, a camera nobody explains. Fourteen shows that borrowed the documentary form and did something else with it.

*By YPB Team · Published August 25, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-mockumentary-tv-series-of-all-time*

---

## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **The Office** — score 1000/1000
   Greg Daniels' NBC adaptation of the British original, set at the Scranton branch of paper company Dunder Mifflin.
2. **Parks and Recreation** — score 604/1000
   Greg Daniels and Michael Schur's comedy about a relentlessly optimistic public servant in Pawnee, Indiana.
3. **Reno 911!** — score 574/1000
   Comedy Central's largely improvised parody of ride-along police documentaries.
4. **Cunk on Earth** — score 506/1000
   BBC series in which Diane Morgan's clueless presenter interviews real academics about human history.
5. **What We Do in the Shadows** — score 447/1000
   FX's vampire housemate comedy, adapted from the Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement film.
6. **Documentary Now!** — score 447/1000
   IFC anthology that recreates a different famous documentary in each episode.
7. **Trailer Park Boys** — score 378/1000
   Canadian comedy following a film crew documenting residents of a Nova Scotia trailer park.
8. **People Just Do Nothing** — score 378/1000
   BBC comedy following the crew behind a West London pirate radio station.
9. **American Vandal** — score 298/1000
   Netflix's straight-faced parody of true-crime documentaries, investigating a high-school vandalism case.
10. **The Office (UK)** — score 298/1000
   Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's original two-series comedy set at a Slough paper merchant.
11. **Arrested Development** — score 203/1000
   Mitchell Hurwitz's narrated comedy about the Bluth family, shot in handheld documentary style.
12. **Summer Heights High** — score 203/1000
   Chris Lilley's Australian comedy in which he plays three characters at one high school.
13. **Modern Family** — score 203/1000
   ABC's family comedy that used talking-head interviews to follow three branches of one Los Angeles clan.
14. **Abbott Elementary** — score 89/1000
   Quinta Brunson's comedy about underfunded teachers at a Philadelphia public school.

Tags: tv shows, comedy, sitcom, mockumentary