NBCU arrives with ‘Stumble,’ ‘The Paper’ and ‘St.’ Denis Medical

Twenty years ago, Greg Daniels learned an important lesson about making mockumentaries from a basketball game. He directed the fifth episode of “The Office” – the now famous “Basketball” from Season 1 and his first behind the camera. The hilarious and chaotic collection game in the Dunder Mifflin warehouse allowed the actors to play off the dynamics built in the first four episodes and test the improvisational nature of the genre. Daniels worked closely with the camera operators — “talking with them like you would with actors,” he says — to be ready for whatever happened on and off the “field.”

“For me, the essence of mockumentary is that you don’t have to know exactly what you’re going to get at the beginning,” says the creator. “There are rules of character and rules of situation, but just like in a basketball game, you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

With well-tuned sets at the ready, there is a freedom in mockumentaries; even with a script, cameras are still required to capture and inspire the unexpected. It’s a credo Daniels is reliving with “The Paper,” the Peacock comedy he co-created with Michael Koman about a dying newspaper and its disjointed staff set in the world of “The Office.”

It’s one of three new mockumentaries from Universal TV this year, including the comeback hit “St. Denis Medical” and the cheerleading competition comedy “Stumble.” The trio arrives as “The Office” celebrates its 20th anniversary and remains one of the most-streamed series on Peacock, alongside its mockumentary sister series “Parks and Recreation,” which Daniels also co-created.

In the years since those series reigned supreme, mockumentaries have flourished on television, with Emmy winners “Abbott Elementary” and “Modern Family” serving as mainstays for ABC, and “What We Do in the Shadows” doing the same for FX.

But Universal has a 20-year reputation to uphold in this area and isn’t greenlighting just any new version of the format to keep the torch burning.

“We feel pressure to make sure we’re not the ones ruining everything,” says Jim Donnelly, executive vice president of comedy development at Universal TV. “The worst part is that people talk fondly about the good old days and think we’re not doing a good job anymore. We don’t make decisions about the shows we develop or release based on whether it’s a mockumentary or not. We happen to work with a lot of creators and writers who are extremely good at it, and those often end up being the best shows.”

Two of those creators — Daniels and “St. Denis Medical” showrunner Eric Ledgin — have reached overall deals with Universal Television.

As audiences have become more familiar with the mockumentary format, Donnelly says the sustainability of the genre has always depended on the unique connection between characters and audience, thanks to these cameras in the world.

“Viewers come to shows like these because they want to be part of something,” he says. “They came to ‘Cheers’ because they wanted a place where everyone knows your name and here you have these really well-drawn characters who are basically in dialogue with you, the audience member.”

This direct-to-camera talking head, a cornerstone of the mockumentary’s satirical version of documentaries, is just another evolution of TV comedy, and one that Ledgin embraces.

“It’s sort of become the modern laugh track,” Ledgin says. “We all objected to the laugh track and decided we didn’t need to be told when to laugh. But I feel like the ‘gaze to the camera’ is a bit of a throwback to that. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. You want to have that connection of knowing that someone else understands what’s funny about it, just like you do.”

Although a proven success, mockumentaries are still an evolving tool in the hands of their creators. Ledgin entered Season 2 with a mission to stabilize his cameras on screen. “I think I’m supposed to want more shakes as someone who’s trying to be a cool writer or showrunner,” he says. “But the truth is, people have a lot of tricks for keeping the camera pretty steady these days, so maybe we don’t need to make it so weird.”

Daniels, on the other hand, wants to return to his roots. “Over the years, people have made life a little easier and the mockumentaries have become less strict,” he says. “One of the things that Michael and I are trying to do with ‘The Paper’ is go back to a stricter form where you don’t have cameras in people’s rooms or cameras anticipating where a character would go when he doesn’t know it himself.”

Evolution is also necessary for the characters. The staff at Dunder Mifflin, who still feared the cameras filming the madness of their workdays, are not the same as the journalists at the Toledo Truth Teller, who seek to raise awareness of their dying institution in “The Paper.”

“One of the things that makes the genre age well is that the way a person imagines themselves being seen today is different from the way they imagined themselves 20 years ago,” Koman says. “Everyone is more aware of how they look on television thanks to reality TV and the Internet. A normal person will be much more aware of the consequences of what might happen if they were filmed doing something.”

But even within genre, there is room for variation. “Stumble” is a prime example. Co-creator Jeff Astrof’s first mockumentary for NBC, “Trial & Error,” draws inspiration from true crime documentaries like “The Staircase.”

“The learning curve with ‘Trial & Error’ was steep,” he says. “Then I fell in love with the format because it has so many jokes and there’s an intimacy with the audience because you’re laughing with them.”

Along with “Stumble,” co-created with sister Liz Astrof, they are streaming Netflix’s documentary series “Cheer” about the intense world of competitive cheerleading, narrated by coach Monica Aldama, who serves as executive producer of the new comedy. Here, it’s Jenn Lyon’s Courtney Potter, pursuing her 15th championship with a motley crew at a Midwestern community college.

Where “The Paper” and “St. Denis” want to fit into the daily lives of their characters, “Stumble” wants to reflect the familiar experience of a sports documentary and build the climax that people are waiting for.

“What we loved so much about ‘Cheer’ was that everyone watching stood in front of the TV like it was a sporting event,” Liz says. “You want them to win Daytona so badly because these kids came from very difficult backgrounds and it saved them. We want these characters to be the ones you care about. We said in our pitch that we wanted people to stand in front of the TV waiting to see if they win.”

If mockumentaries are supposed to be slices of life – unvarnished in all its fun forms – Universal is moving toward the softer side of life today with its new trio.

“For these kids, it’s the most important moment of their lives; it’s a matter of life and death for them,” Astrof says of “Stumble.” “But if you take it back a little bit, it’s just a flyover city in a flyover state. That’s what gives these shows their charm. It’s how much people care about something. I think people want to see people care about something.”