The IFC mocumentary series Documentary Now! comes from creators Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and Rhys Thomas, and was inspired by a sketch they did for Saturday Night Live. The comedic series ran for four seasons, from 2015-2022 on IFC. The premise of the show is that we are watching episodes of the long-running news-magazine series Documentary Now!, hosted by Helen Mirren, which has just entered its 50th season. Mirren introduces each documentary, the majority of which are spoofs of well-known documentary film/series. These docs parody the look and feel of the originals. While the documentaries are presented in a deadpan, factual manner, the subjects are fictitious and the episodes are filled with humor.

The series features a wide variety of documentary styles from all different eras, opening with one of the most bizarre, a parody of 1975’s Grey Gardens (“Sandy Passage”,) with Armisen and Hader playing the aging female socialites, Later seasons include versions of Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense (“Final Transmission”), 1969 door-to-door Bible salesmen doc Salesman (“Globesman”), 2004 professional bowling documentary A League of Ordinary Gentleman (“Any Given Saturday Afternoon”), 1994 presidential campaign doc The War Room (“The Bunker”), 1970 theater documentary Original Cast Album: Company (“Original Cast Album: Co-Op” ), more recent 2020 doc My Octopus Teacher (“My Monkey Grifter”), and 2013’s Dear Mr. Watterson where a fan looks for the reclusive author of Calvin & Hobbes but in this version (“Searching for Mr. Larson: A Love Letter from the Far Side”) a fan wants to interview The Far Side‘s Gary Larson. While the majority of the episodes parody a specific documentary film, there are some more generic inspirations, like the VH-1 Behind the Music-inspired two-part episode “Gentle and Soft: The Story of the Blue Jean Committee”, and the VICE news report inspired “DRONEZ: The Hunt for El Chingon”.

Fred Armisen & Bill Hader are the series regulars playing all kinds of various characters. Hader left after the second season to work on his series Barry. There are so many great guest stars throughout the four seasons, including Jack Black, Owen Wilson, Michael Keaton, Cate Blanchett, Alexander Skarsgård, Nicholas Braun, Natasha Lyonne, Harvey Guillén, Jonathan Pryce, John Rhys-Davies, Tom Jones, Kevin Dunn, Michael C. Hall, Jamie Demetriou, Bobby Moynihan, Maya Rudolph, Taran Killam, John Mulaney, Paula Pell, James Urbaniak, Aidy Bryant, Richard Kind, Tim Robinson, Lennon Parham, John Slattery, Dale Dickey, and more. Plus folks such as Cameron Crowe, Chuck Klosterman, Daryl Hall, Kenny Loggins, Haim, Michael McDonald, Peter Bogdanovich, Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, Peter Fonda, Anne Hathaway, Connie Chung, and Thierry Guetta appearing as themselves.

Here is a rundown of all of the episodes and the documentaries they parody.

• Season 1 (2015):
  • “Sandy Passage” – Grey Gardens (1975)
  • “Kunuk Uncovered” – Nanook of the North (1922)
  • “DRONEZ: The Hunt for El Chingon” – VICE news report
  • “The Eye Doesn’t Lie” – The Thin Blue Line (1988)
  • “A Town, a Gangster, a Festival” – general human-interest documentary
  • “Gentle and Soft: The Story of the Blue Jean Committee” – VH-1 Behind the Music
• Season 2 (2016):
  • “The Bunker” – The War Room (1993)
  • “Juan Likes Rice and Chicken” – Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)
  • “Parker Gail’s Location is Everything” – Swimming to Cambodia (1987)
  • “Globesman” – Salesman (1969)
  • “Final Transmission” – Talking Heads’ concert film Stop Making Sense (1984)
  • “Mr. Runner Up: My Life as an Oscar Bridesmaid” – The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002)
• Season 3 (2019):
  • “Batsh*t Valley” – Wild Wild Country (2018)
  • “Original Cast Album: Co-Op” – Original Cast Album: Company (1970)
  • “Waiting for the Artist” – Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present (2012)
  • “Searching for Mr. Larson: A Love Letter from the Far Side” – Dear Mr. Watterson (2013)
  • “Long Gone” – Let’s Get Lost (1988)
  • “Any Given Saturday Afternoon” – A League of Ordinary Gentleman (2004)
• Season 4 (2022):
  • “Soldier of Illusion” – Burden Of Dreams (1982)
  • “Two Hairdressers in Bagglyport” – Three Salons at the Seaside (1994)
  • “How They Threw Rocks” – When We Were Kings (1996)
  • “My Monkey Grifter” – My Octopus Teacher (2020)
  • “Trouver Frisson” – The Gleaners & I (2000)

I can’t say that I had even heard of the majority of the documentaries being parodied—I think the only one I had actually seen was Stop Making Sense. For the most part, the humor still works even if you are unfamiliar with the source material. But for those who have seen these docs, they will notice that there has been a lot of attention to detail. This was especially noticeable to me in the “Final Transmission” episode, where it was impressive how many little things they recreated and captured from Stop Making Sense. The series not only tailors the sound, look and feel of each episode to match that of the original documentary, but the writing can be quite clever and funny as it lampoons the source material. Some of the writers on this series include Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, John Mulaney & Erik Kenward, many of whom had worked on SNL and had experience writing clever parodies.

Mill Creek had previously released the first 2 seasons of Documentary Now! on Blu-ray and DVD back in 2018, and third season episode “Original Cast Album: Co-Op” had appeared as a bonus feature on Criterion’s disc release of Original Cast Album: Company, the film it parodied. However, Mill Creek’s new “Complete Collection” Blu-ray release is the first time seasons 3 & 4 have been made available in their entirety on disc.

The video presentation looks quite good. Since each episode is tailored to match the look and sound of the documentary being parodied, the picture quality may intentionally be sub-par or altered. But the unstylized, modern footage always looks quite clean and clear. The audio is presented as an English Uncompressed LPCM 2.0 Stereo track, which sounds very good, and is more than sufficient for a “documentary”, providing clear dialogue throughout. The discs also offer optional English SDH subtitles on all episodes.

Each season resides on a separate disc, and the four discs are placed overlapping on two trays in the center of a foldable digipack package. At the far end of the unfolded package is a pocket containing a shrink-wrapped collection of 8 mini poster cards depicting the parody poster artwork for some of the episodes. The folded digipak case is placed inside a carboard slipcase along with a beautiful 28-page full color booklet, which contains an introduction by Fred Armisen as well as details about each episode including a large picture of the parody poster art. Each disc offers a Play All option as well as a menu of the season’s poster art to select which episode to watch. All of the bonus material is found on the Season 4 disc. This consists of an hour-long panel with the creators from season 1, 18 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage and 30 minutes of deleted/extended scenes from various episodes, as well as some trailers/promos for each season.

What’s Included:

Episodes: (10:06:17)

Blu-ray:

• All 27 episodes of the series, 1 disc per season:
  • Season 1: (2:31:12)
    “Sandy Passage”, “DRONEZ: The Hunt for El Chingon”, “Kunuk Uncovered”, “The Eye Doesn’t Lie”, “A Town, a Gangster, a Festival”, “Gentle & Soft: The Story of the Blue Jean Committee Part 1”, “Gentle & Soft: The Story of the Blue Jean Committee Part 2”
  • Season 2: (2:36:26)
    Disc 2: “The Bunker”, “Juan Likes Rice & Chicken”, “Parker Gail’s Location Is Everything”, “Globesman”, “Final Transmission”, “Mr. Runner Up: My Life as an Oscar Bridesmaid Part 1”, “Mr. Runner Up: My Life as an Oscar Bridesmaid Part 2”
  • Season 3: (2:41:50)
    Disc 3: “Batsh*t Valley, Part 1”, “Batsh*t Valley, Part 2”, “Original Cast Album: Co-Op”, “Waiting for the Artist”, “Searching for Mr. Larson: A Love Letter from the Far Side”, “Long Gone”, “Any Given Saturday Afternoon”
  • Season 4: (2:16:49)
    Disc 4: “Soldier of Illusion, Part 1”, “Soldier of Illusion, Part 2”, “Two Hairdressers in Bagglyport”, “How They Threw Rocks”, “My Monkey Grifter”, “Trouver Frisson”
• 1080p / Widescreen 1.78:1
• Audio: English Uncompressed LPCM 2.0 Stereo
• Subtitles: English SDH

Collectibles:

• 28-page Booklet with Introduction by Fred Armisen
• 8 Mini Poster Cards

Extras
All bonus material can be found on Disc 4.

• IFC Emmy® Panel Discussion (59:20)
  Series creators/EPs/writers/stars Fred Armisen, Bill Hader & Seth Meyers take the stage hor a hilarious discussion about the first season of the series, and how the idea for the series came about from an SNL sketch “The History of Punk”.
  
• Behind the Scenes Featurettes (18:24)
  Raw behind-the-scenes footage from “Juan Likes Rice & Chicken”, “Two Hairdressers in Bagglyport”, “Mr. Runner Up: My Life as an Oscar Bridesmaid”, “Parker Gail’s Location is Everything”, and “Trouver Frisson” plays back-to-back. This is followed by a more traditional behind-the-scenes look at “Final Transmission”, featuring interviews with the actors/writers/director.
• Deleted Scenes (29:47)
  Deleted/Extended scenes for “Sandy Passage”, “The Eye Doesn’t Lie”, “Gentle & Soft: The Story of the Blue Jean Committee”, “The Bunker”, “Globesman”, “Searching for Mr. Larson: A Love Letter from the Far Side”, “Any Given Saturday Afternoon”, “Batsh*t Valley”, “Waiting for the Artist”, “How They Threw Rocks”, “Soldier of Illusion”, and “Two Hairdressers in Bagglyport”.
• Trailers/Promos
  • Season 1 (2:21) – 4 promos
  • Season 2 (2:03) – 2 promos
  • Season 3 (3:18) – 5 promos
  • Season 4 (:48) – 2 promos

Final Thoughts:

Documentary Now! is a clever and fun series. Like with SNL sketches, some of the episodes can be hit or miss, however, the cast is great, there are some wonderful guest stars, and I love how the series is able to recapture the unique look and feel of the source material in each episode. Folks who have seen the original documentaries being parodied will get a little more out of each episode, but this shouldn’t stop any from enjoying the series. If anything, it’ll probably make you seek out the original docs after watching the episodes. Mill Creek’s release looks and sounds great, contains a solid assortment of bonus material, and includes some wonderful collectable items for fans—the book makes a great companion to the series with some beautiful artwork, and the poster cards are a nice addition.