ABC's Abbott Elementary brought the popular TV mockumentary back to primetime television and is reviving the genre by improving it. The sitcom follows a group of teachers at a Philadelphia public school who strive to help their students succeed despite a lack of resources and funding. Ava Coleman (Janelle James), the incompetent principal, brings in a film crew whose purpose is to observe underfunded schools. Outside its many Emmys, the Abbott Elementary mockumentary show scooped up a Golden Globe in 2023 for Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy.
In the Abbott Elementary mockumentary, Ava's concerns are more aligned with her own best interests at any given time rather than helping the school. Her opposite is Abbott Elementary's young second-grade teacher Janine Teagues (Quinta Brunson), whose determined optimism leads to clashes with senior teachers and, at times, works against her efforts. The collective cast of the show, one of 2022's best TV sitcoms, showcases different aspects of the culture and obstacles teachers encounter when working with Abbott Elementary's children.
How Abbott Elementary Revitalized The TV Mockumentary
Starting with the workplace mockumentary, the TV mockumentary was a prominent comedy subgenre in the mid-2000s and quickly grew in both popularity and audience size, and has been brought back to life by the Abbott Elementary mockumentary. In the age of binging, these shows became a phenomenon in pop culture, particularly with millennials. At the peak of the genre, shows like The Office, Parks and Recreation, Reno 911!, and Arrested Development were all wildly popular. Slightly different takes like Modern Family brought networks critical acclaim. Over time, however, the genre slowly fell out of vogue as its popularity faded. By the mid-2010s, the TV mockumentary was in full decline, as illustrated by ABC's 2015 attempt to create a TV mockumentary of the beloved franchise, The Muppets. But it garnered low ratings, forcing a change in showrunners, and The Muppets was canceled by ABC. After the failure of The Muppets, the mockumentary was all but dead as a genre.
But since its premiere, Abbott Elementary has broken viewership records. Stunningly, it's the first comedy in the network's history to quadruple its ratings for a premiere episode after its debut, increasing from 2.79 million viewers to 7.1 million–an almost 300% increase for season 1. Ratings have continued to grow since season 2, adding on 10 million viewers, with the praise that the Abbott Elementary mockumentary has received from viewers and critics alike. Since its debut, there has even been the recurring claim that Abbott Elementary has restored the desire to tune in each week to watch a primetime network sitcom, a genre that has a far older average viewership than the all-important 18-49-year-old demo. Abbott Elementary is revitalizing younger viewers' interest in the TV mockumentary in a way that shows like Parks & Recreation used to. Yet, Abbott Elementary manages not to fall in that show's shadow, nor the shadow of the TV mockumentaries that have come before, for a few reasons. Thanks to the series' Golden Globe, hunger for more Abbott Elementary content has only grown.
Abbott Elementary Flipped The Mockumentary Script
Being a workplace sitcom and utilizing the TV mockumentary style, the Abbott Elementary mockumentary has of course immediately been compared to one of the most respected mockumentaries, The Office. However, Abbott Elementary is a more representative TV mockumentary for a new generation. One of the contributing factors to the success of the show is that it puts the spotlight on Black representation and Black culture, which is amplified by having a predominantly Black cast. In Abbott Elementary season 1, episode 4, for example, Janine teaches her students a lesson using a version of AAVE. She refers to it as Philadelphia Slang, a language her students commonly use in their everyday lives. In episode 5, substitute teacher Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams) encourages the nerdy history teacher (Jacob Hill) to use his students' roasts of him in his lessons.
The setting also contributes to authentic representation in other ways and helps to elevate the Abbott Elementary mockumentary and evolve the TV mockumentary genre. Previously, most of the biggest mockumentaries were in predominantly white, middle-class office or department settings. Setting Abbott Elementary in a public, city school is a fresh look at a completely different kind of workplace for the mockumentary. It taps into the humor within the ordinary circumstances of a school's day-to-day or the charm of kids being kids. As the show finds humor in the realities that most educators face in the American public school system, it is a deliberate and clever choice to focus a sitcom revolving around teachers and children in the mockumentary format. As Abbott Elementary's wild success shows, the TV mockumentary can still be popular — it just has to evolve.
Abbott Elementary's Setting Is A Comedy Goldmine
The Abbott Elementary mockumentary isn't the only TV comedy to be set in a school — but it is the first US mockumentary to harness this unique setting. Given exactly how many "school setting" shows there have been over the years, it's amazing that the mockumentary style hasn't been adapted to one of these shows in the past. School is often an overused setting for a television show, and the mockumentary style featured in shows like The Office or Modern Family has been dead for years. Somehow, Abbott Elementary was able to take a dead genre and an overused setting and turn it into a comedy goldmine. With season 2 being over and Abbott Elementary season 3 on the way, the series has recently upped the ante to include more character details about the adult ensemble casts' personal lives, and to great success. If a Golden Globe is any indication, then Abbott Elementary is certainly the show to watch out for come next award season.