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Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976)
7.9/10on IMDb
First aired
Norman Lear's syndicated oddity took the soap opera's weeknight rhythm and played it almost straight, which is exactly what makes it so unsettling. Louise Lasser's Mary is a housewife in Fernwood, Ohio, who meets mass murder and the waxy yellow buildup on her kitchen floor with the same anxious sincerity. The satire is aimed as much at the promises of advertising as at the soap itself. Choose it if you like parody that sits uncomfortably close to the real thing, and be ready for a 1970s pace.
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Soap (1977)
8.3/10on IMDb
First aired
Susan Harris moved the daytime soap into prime time and turned its machinery into the joke. Each episode opens with the announcer's summary of the convoluted story so far and closes by promising that the dangling questions will be answered next time, a device that gets funnier as the plots grow more absurd. The wealthy Tates and working-class Campbells carry it through four seasons on ABC. Billy Crystal's Jodie Dallas, one of the first major openly gay characters on American prime-time television, gives it a heart beneath the farce.
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Police Squad! (1982)
8.3/10on IMDb
First aired
The Airplane! team pointed their sight gags at the police procedural, and every inch of the format gets mocked, from the opening titles onward. Each episode's announced title never matches the one on screen, and each week's special guest star is introduced and promptly killed. Leslie Nielsen's deadpan Frank Drebin plays every idiocy as hard-boiled routine. ABC canceled it after six episodes, which makes it a perfect single evening, and it later led to the Naked Gun films.
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Sledge Hammer! (1986)
8.1/10on IMDb
First aired
Where Police Squad! spoofs the whole procedural, this one takes aim at a single type: the cop on the edge, in the mold of Dirty Harry. David Rasche plays Inspector Hammer completely straight, a man who fixes every problem with far more force than it needs. His catchphrase, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing", is the setup for the first season's finale, which ends with him destroying the city while trying to disarm a nuclear warhead. Two ABC seasons, broad and very much of the 1980s.
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The Day Today (1994)
8.6/10on IMDb
First aired
Six half-hours on BBC2 that nailed the grammar of television news so precisely that real bulletins have looked slightly ridiculous ever since. Chris Morris anchors with thunderous self-importance, the graphics swoop and clang, and the correspondents inflate nothing into crisis. Armando Iannucci co-created it from the radio series On the Hour, and Steve Coogan's sports reporter Alan Partridge is already here, fumbling his metaphors. Short enough for one sitting, dense enough to rewatch for the background jokes.
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Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge (1994)
8.2/10on IMDb
First aired
Before This Time, Alan Partridge had a chat show of his own, and it is the sharper spoof. Knowing Me Knowing You copies the celebrity chat show beat for beat, from the "Aha!" entrance to the sofa interviews, while Steve Coogan's Alan mishandles every guest with a fatal mix of vanity and panic. Coogan, Armando Iannucci and Patrick Marber wrote the six BBC Two episodes, adapted from a Radio 4 run, and the series ends with Alan accidentally shooting a guest. The Christmas special, Knowing Me, Knowing Yule, is the natural follow-up.
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Brass Eye (1997)
8.6/10on IMDb
First aired
Chris Morris moved from the nightly bulletin to the hectoring current affairs documentary, and made it dangerous. The episodes copy the genre's moral panic, grim reconstructions and urgent campaigns, then put real celebrities and an MP in front of the camera to endorse them, most famously a warning against a made-up drug called Cake. The 2001 special on pedophilia and media panic drew around 3,000 complaints. Choose it for parody with real targets, and expect it to be far harsher than The Day Today.
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Look Around You (2002)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
If you remember the cart being wheeled into class for a schools program, this will feel like a memory going wrong. Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz recreated early 1980s educational films down to the droning synth, the sinister calm narration and the faded color, then filled them with nonsense science delivered with total authority. The first series is eight ten-minute shorts; the second switches to half-hour episodes in the style of Tomorrow's World. Start with the shorts, which are the purer imitation.
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Reno 911! (2003)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
A direct copy of Cops, with the ride-along camera and the deputies explaining themselves after another call has gone badly. Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant and Kerri Kenney-Silver let the cast find much of the dialogue as they went, which gives the incompetence an unpredictable, rambling energy that tightly scripted spoofs rarely manage. The humor is crude and the hit rate uneven, but the format is spot on. Comedy Central's original seasons are the ones to start with; later revivals ran on Quibi and The Roku Channel.
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Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004)
8.5/10on IMDb
First aired
The conceit is perfect: a lost 1980s horror series by a self-proclaimed visionary author, finally broadcast with smug commentary from its "original" cast. Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade mock the stilted acting, shoddy effects and clumsy editing of low-budget genre television, and the vanity of the man in charge of it all. Romford's Darkplace Hospital sits on a gateway to hell, which is about as much plot as you need. Channel 4 aired a single series of six episodes, and nearly every one repays a second watch.
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Wonder Showzen (2005)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
Wonder Showzen dresses itself up as a cheerful educational show for small children, with puppets, bright lessons and child presenters in the manner of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, then fills it with material no children's channel would touch. Vernon Chatman and John Lee made two seasons for MTV2. The street segments are the most notorious: in Beat Kids a child reporter puts deliberately offensive questions to passers-by, and the puppet Clarence goads members of the public. It is made for adults and often shocking on purpose, so it suits viewers with a strong stomach.
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Childrens Hospital (2008)
7.8/10on IMDb
First aired
Rob Corddry's medical drama spoof began as a web series and ran for seven seasons on Adult Swim in eleven-minute episodes, which suits its rapid-fire absurdity. It mocks the faux-deep voiceovers and romantic intrigue of hospital shows, and it keeps changing its own format: some episodes pose as behind-the-scenes documentaries about a long-running drama, and one season finale was billed as a live broadcast in tribute to ER. Everyone plays it with the solemnity of the real thing, which is what makes the silliness land.
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Danger 5 (2012)
8.3/10on IMDb
First aired
This Australian cult series dresses World War II up as a campy 1960s spy show, following a team of Allied agents on a mission to kill Hitler. Dario Russo and David Ashby get the look of a cheap period action series exactly right, and the dated values of the era become part of the joke. The second series jumps to a neon, excess-soaked version of 1982 with ninjas, discos and prom queens. Expect deliberate camp and cartoonish violence; it is for viewers who enjoy pastiche at its most committed.
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The Eric Andre Show (2012)
8.5/10on IMDb
First aired
Most talk-show spoofs exaggerate the host's vanity; this one takes the late-night format apart with its bare hands. Episodes open with Eric André running on and wrecking the desk and backdrop, and the interviews that follow are ambushes, with real celebrities pranked and made uncomfortable without warning, and early episodes passing off impostors as famous guests. Hannibal Buress sits beside him as the unbothered co-host until he leaves during season five. Six seasons on Adult Swim; it is chaotic and often gross, and not for anyone after a gentle laugh.
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Burning Love (2012)
7.9/10on IMDb
First aired
Erica Oyama's web series lifts the whole Bachelor ritual, from the rose ceremonies to the confessional interviews and the overwrought declarations of love, and pushes each one just past the point of dignity. Ken Marino plays the fireman looking for a wife with complete sincerity, surrounded by contestants who are each one strange detail away from a real reality show. The second season swaps in a bachelorette, and the third sends former contestants into a house to compete. Short, bingeable and most fun if you have watched the real thing.
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The Spoils of Babylon (2014)
6.7/10on IMDb
First aired
The target is the sweeping network event miniseries adapted from a doorstop novel, in the tradition of The Thorn Birds and Rich Man, Poor Man. Will Ferrell introduces each episode as Eric Jonrosh, the bloated author of the saga, while Tobey Maguire and Kristen Wiig play the star-crossed siblings at its center with grave intensity. The cheap effects and swelling melodrama are all part of the gag. Six short episodes on IFC make it an easy weekend, and the follow-up, The Spoils Before Dying, gives the same team another go.
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Review (2014)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
The consumer critic show is a small format, but Andy Daly finds something enormous in it. His Forrest MacNeil reviews viewer-requested life experiences, from eating pancakes to getting divorced, and rates each out of five stars with the earnest studio patter of a man who believes in the format completely. What starts as a neat gimmick turns into a dark story about what his devotion costs him. Three seasons on Comedy Central, adapted from the Australian Review with Myles Barlow. The finale is worth reaching.
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Documentary Now! (2015)
8.1/10on IMDb
First aired
Every episode copies one celebrated documentary, so the series doubles as a tour of the form. Grey Gardens becomes Sandy Passage, Jiro Dreams of Sushi becomes a strict Colombian restaurateur in Juan Likes Rice & Chicken, and Original Cast Album: Co-Op recreates a fraught cast recording session down to the exhausted faces. Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers and Rhys Thomas match each film's camera style and era, and Helen Mirren introduces them as if they were classics. Watch the originals first if you can; the jokes get richer.
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Angie Tribeca (2016)
7.1/10on IMDb
First aired
Steve and Nancy Carell's police procedural parody is the closest modern heir to Police Squad!, packed with literal-minded wordplay and background gags behind the grim crime-scene banter. Rashida Jones plays the lone-wolf LAPD detective with a straight face through cases such as the murder of a ventriloquist. TBS launched all ten first-season episodes in a 25-hour marathon, and it ran for four seasons. The joke rate matters more than the stories here, so it suits a few episodes at a time rather than a long binge.
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American Vandal (2017)
8.1/10on IMDb
First aired
The best true-crime parody takes the genre's tools seriously enough to make you care. Two students investigate who spray-painted crude drawings on 27 teachers' cars, using the timelines, re-enactments and doubt-sowing interviews of Making a Murderer and Serial. The case is deliberately juvenile; the craft and the questions about reputation are not, and the first season won a Peabody Award. Netflix stopped after two seasons, the second about a school cafeteria's laxative-spiked lemonade. Expect a lot of explicit toilet humor.
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Trial & Error (2017)
7.9/10on IMDb
First aired
Where American Vandal borrows true crime's investigative seriousness, this NBC comedy goes after the genre's small-town eccentricity and the documentary crew trailing a murder trial. A young New York lawyer defends a poetry professor accused of killing his wife, played by John Lithgow with sublime cluelessness, while the local legal team stumbles from one implausible lead to the next. Kristin Chenoweth takes the spotlight in the second and final season. It is gentler and sillier than most shows here, so it suits a lighter evening.
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This Time with Alan Partridge (2019)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
Anyone who has half-watched teatime magazine television will recognize every beat: the sofa chat, the awkward link to a pre-recorded film, the co-presenter's practiced warmth. Steve Coogan's Alan stands in as co-host of This Time beside Susannah Fielding's Jennie Gresham, and the comedy comes from watching him try to look relaxed in a format built on looking relaxed. It spoofs shows such as The One Show with uncanny accuracy. Two series on BBC One; no earlier Partridge viewing is needed.
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Kevin Can F**K Himself (2021)
7.2/10on IMDb
First aired
Valerie Armstrong's AMC series turns the multi-camera sitcom against itself. Whenever Annie Murphy's Allison is in the room with her oafish husband, the show is bright, flatly lit and full of canned laughter; the moment she leaves, it switches to a single-camera drama about how miserable that life really is. The parody is the point rather than the punchline, so it is closer to a dark thriller than a comedy. Two seasons and 16 episodes, for viewers who have always wondered why the sitcom wife puts up with it.
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Cunk on... (2018)
7.9/10on TMDB
First aired
Cunk on Britain and Cunk on Earth
Charlie Brooker's landmark-history spoof gets the sweeping documentary's habits exactly right: the slow walk toward camera, the solemn music, the pause before a profound remark. Diane Morgan's Philomena Cunk then delivers that remark with total confidence and no grasp of the subject, and her baffled expert interviewees are a joy. Cunk on Earth, five episodes on BBC Two and later Netflix, is the bigger and better place to start; Cunk on Britain came first.
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