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St. Denis Medical is a Mockumentary Comedy Like No Other For This Reason
How St. Denis Medical makes the The Office and Parks and Recreation format its own.
The television mockumentary series format has come a long way since former Monty Pythoner Eric Idle used it to send up The Beatles with his 1975 BBC series, Rutland Weekend Television. In more recent years, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's The Office and then Greg Daniel's NBC 2005 adaptation of The Office made the format a staple in modern sitcom creation. So some may be wondering what makes the new St. Denis Medical stand out?
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NBC's latest foray into the mockumentary sitcom is co-created by Justin Spitzer and Eric Ledgin (Superstore). The series is setup around the underfunded but always busy Oregon hospital that lets audiences see what ground level medicine looks like in the wild. Starring comedy greats like Wendi McLendon-Covey and David Alan Grier, the series uses its cameras in a slightly different way to let the medical professionals share what a day-in-the-life is like for them.
How St. Denis Medical is exploring camera styles
Spitzer told NBC Insider during a summer press day for the series that when it came down to planning the nuts and bolts of how and why the cameras are present in the show, they asked themselves a lot of questions that helped determine the show's tone. Like, whether they wanted one camera with talking heads or two to cut between it?
"I think we use it to set up story, we use it for comedy. We use the existence of it more than a lot of others," Spitzer said of their choices. "Like you’ll occasionally hear the documentarian offscreen ask a question so there’s a little bit more awareness than I’ve seen in some other shows."
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Ledgin added that St. Denis's characters will sometimes talk to the camera with awareness, and then get captured acknowledging they're treating someone in a more surreptitious way.
"There’s also this sort of middle area that we’re finding where it’s like someone is saying something half to camera, half to a patient or a co-worker, and it just feels like it gives you so many different layers to play with," he detailed. "We’re lucky enough to have seven series regulars that are all just killer actors and can do every one of those levels in a different, interesting way."
The St. Denis Medical Cast is Playing with the Mockumentary Format
At a recent set visit to where St. Denis Medical shoots on the Universal Studios lot, NBC Insider asked several of the cast what it's like to work on a show where you have to break the cardinal rule of acting on film, and actually look at the camera?
Allison Tolman, who plays long-time nurse Alex, said she doesn't think about it before she goes into a scene.
"What works best for me is [finding] when is the time when Alex is like, "Wait, what?" and that's the time when you look at the camera. Like, 'Are you witnessing this? Are you seeing what I'm seeing?' Or like, 'Oh, I'm embarrassed. I wish you weren't seeing this.'"
She calls this kind of camera an "acting partner" that makes you feel really naked.
"So you have to really leave yourself open and vulnerable to that. You just treat it like a character and that's really where the gold is," Tolman explained.
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For Mclendon-Covey, who acted in this format for the classic cop parody, Reno 911!, she said she loved returning to the format for St. Denis Medical because it made sense.
"The mockumentary style is a very efficient way to tell a workplace story, especially because a lot of the comedy lives in between the lines," she explained. "That camera swinging around will pick up comedy that you didn't even know was there. You don't read it on the script, you see it later on in the finished product. So, there are a lot of fun surprises working that way."
For Australian actor/filmmaker Josh Lawson, who plays the pompous surgeon Bruce, he finds the format allows them to say a lot with their faces that makes it more efficient in a comedy.
"We only have 20-something minutes to get the story across and that just helps fast forward," he observed.
"I really like it," he continued about his first foray in this style. "It feels like we're moving a little bit away from that Hollywood gloss. I wonder if social media has something to do with that as well, that we're seeing so many people just raw filming themselves and filming others, that sometimes, if there's too much of a Hollywood ping to it, it feels a little false. This mockumentary style, I think gives it a little bit more of a grungy, veritas vibe."
St. Denis Medical” premieres on Tuesday, Nov. 12, with back-to-back episodes on NBC, and streaming the following day on Peacock.
