And now, Documentary Now!
To me, one of the standouts in this current golden age of television standouts has got to be Documentary Now!, the brainchild of SNL alums Seth Meyers, Bill Hader and Fred Armisen. For those who are unfamiliar, the show purports to be a long-running PBS-ish showcase for documentaries. For the show's fictional 50th anniversary (now 51st as the DN! moves into its second season), in each episode, the incomparable Dame Helen Mirren introduces a documentary from the show's "past".
The format allows the creative team to skip around, both in time and genre, presenting - I would call them spoofs, but they're done so faithfully and with such care, no matter how funny or absurd they get - homages of famous documentaries and documentarian styles. Not only are the settings, the characters and the dialogue pitch-perfect, but the the visual design of each episode is totally on point. From the Documentary Now! logos that represent its 50 years to the opening credits of each fake documentary to the throwaway props in any given scene (check out "Diet Brown Cola" in the premier of S2), everything is new but looks like it was plucked from the past.