5 Ways The Office Is The Best TV Mockumentary (& 5 Ways It’s What We Do In The Shadows)

5 Ways The Office Is The Best TV Mockumentary (& 5 Ways It’s What We Do In The Shadows)

The Office and What We Do In The Shadows are two of the best mockumentary TV shows ever made, but which show does the mockumentary format better?

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The Office was hugely influential in the sitcom landscape, as it paved the way for loads of other mockumentaries to become successful. However, the problem with many of these shows is that they are just too similar in tone to the Steve Carrell-led NBC show.

Just like The Office did before it, What We Do In The Shadows completely reinvented the mockumentary genre. Between the fantasy and surreal elements, all of the surprises, and consistently featuring documentary tropes, the vampire series is the best of its kind. Yet, it’s hard to surpass a classic.

10 The Office: These Characters Exist In Real Life

The Office has some great recurring characters, whether it’s Creed turning up to work in blood-soaked shirts or Kevin getting increasingly dumber with each consecutive season. And though all of the characters are totally exaggerated, for the most part, they are accurate portrayals of characters who would have an office-based job at a place like Dunder Mifflin.

Stanley is exactly the unenthused worker that would be found in the corner of the room and Andy is the suck-up who would kill for a role in middle management. And most satirical of all of them is Toby, the humdrum HR manager. Any office worker knows these people, and its reliability sets The Office apart.

9 What We Do In The Shadows: The Fantastical Elements

As the movie that the TV show is based on was directed by MCU alum, Taika Waititi, who has such a unique sense of humor, it’s no surprise that the show is “out there.” And while The Office is a realistic depiction of a workplace, What We Do In The Shadows depicts a fantasy world, but with a realistic approach.

The vampires explain their day-to-day events to the documentarians as if it’s a perfectly normal activity. The show jumps around between sucking the blood from victims and casually turning into a bat as if it’s weird not to do such things.

8 The Office: It Feels Like A Realistic Workplace

Just as the exaggerated characters are still based on employees found in real-life workplaces, the office itself is realistic of other sales-based offices.

There are story arcs in the show that represent this well, between Jim being disincentivized to work after his commission was capped and Ryan attempting to move all sales online. And on top of all of this, there’s an overall tone in the office of crushed spirits, something to which many employees can relate if they are doing a job they don’t love.

7 What We Do In The Shadows: Less Edits And Less Cameras

What We Do In The Shadows feels more like a documentary because there are fewer cuts between angles. The more The Office progressed, the more production value was put into the show, and this included covering more ground with the camera.

Though it worked for the fact that there are more hilarious reaction shots from the recurring characters, it’s less realistic. A documentary crew isn’t going to have dozens of cameramen dotted around the office. However, the vampire mockumentary sticks with just a couple of angels for the most part, but it also cleverly takes advantage of the use of CCTV.

6 The Office: Focuses On Relationships Between Characters

Relationships are an important part of The Office, as the one-liners and zany characters might not have been so successful without the foundation of Jim and Pam. The documentarians chronicle their relationship in such a way that it’s almost the basis and narrative arc of the fictional documentary in the final episode.

But more interesting than the characters’ romantic relationships, the documentary crew follows the working partnerships between characters and the power struggles in the office. Between Jan’s deposition and the fight for the position of the alpha male when Jim and Michael are co-managers, all the work dynamics are brilliantly documented.

5 What We Do In The Shadows: It’s Constantly Surprising

The best documentaries have a surprising amount in common with movies when it comes to the way they tell the narrative. Documentary films often hold off from telling the whole truth, only for it to be a big reveal down the line. And besides a big reveal, they’re constantly surprising viewers by throwing facts and figures at the audience.

Some fans felt that The Office became fairly routine with its storytelling. However, What We Do In The Shadows is always surprising, especially as the show continues to build its own vampire lore.

4 The Office: The Direct-To-Camera Interviews

The vampires speak to the camera in What We Do In The Shadows too, but there’s much less of a focus on it and many would agree that it isn’t half as well done. The talking head as a device has been used to no end in mockumentaries, but with there being such a vast number of characters in The Office, there’s a direct-to-camera reaction to any event from almost every character.

Thanks to the technique, barely any character is ever left out of an episode, and even if there’s an episode that doesn’t involve a character, they’ll at least get a couple of one-liners in there. It makes fans wonder just how much footage was left on the cutting room floor, and how much bonus content NBC is sitting on.

3 What We Do In The Shadows: How It Involves The Documentarians

One of the biggest criticisms of The Office in its last leg was the way it incorporated the actual documentarians who were filming Dunder Mifflin. The worst part wasn’t that Pam considered cheating on Jim with Brian, who was the boom operator for the documentary, but because Brian intervened with what was happening. It’s why many fans feel that season 9 is the worst season of The Office.

In What We Do In The Shadows, the documentarians don’t intervene with what’s going on at all, but instead, they hilariously get the brunt of the vampires’ actions. And what the vampire series does best is introduce the documentarians as part of the show from the very beginning. The Office did the opposite, as it jarringly implemented the documentarians in season 9.

2 The Office: It Does Deadpan Better

The Office is one of the best mockumentaries ever made, and it’s mostly thanks to its deadpan humor. This is due, in part, to the show being based on the BBC series of the same name, and the U.S. version’s brilliant take on British humor quickly took on a form of its own.

What We Do In The Shadows’ humor isn’t quite the same as the deadpan delivery in The Office. However, it is directly influenced by The Office when it comes to Colin Robinson’s scenes. The character is a daywalker and his whole schtick is draining people’s energy with his deadpan characteristics and monotonous voice.

1 What We Do In The Shadows: The Show Doesn’t Forget That It’s A Mockumentary

Based on everything that What We Do In The Shadows does best, it never actually forgets that it’s a mockumentary. The show continuously surprises viewers, provides new information to them, and is shot like a documentary. The same can’t be said about The Office.

The very definition of a “documentary” is to provide information to viewers and examine an event based on facts, but in its later years, The Office often forgot to do that. Instead, it was simply a sitcom that was shot like a found footage movie and the characters went about their day in a soap opera-like fashion.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/office-what-we-do-shadows-which-better-mockumentary-tv-show/

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