NBC's New Show Stumble Has Something Major in Common with The Office and Parks and Recreation
Find out what NBC's upcoming sitcom Stumble shares with other comedies like The Office, The Paper, and Parks and Recreation.
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When the cheerleading comedy Stumble premieres later this fall, it joins a special category of NBC sitcoms that includes Parks and Recreation, The Office, and the latter's recent Peacock spinoff, The Paper.
As for what Stumble has in common with these other shows? The series will also be presented mockumentary-style.
Read on to learn more about the genre and Stumble.
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What is a mockumentary?
The term "mockumentary" blends the words mock and documentary. It's come to be known as any film or television show that uses a documentary film production style to satirize a subject. One of the earliest known mentions of the word came in Ottawa, Canada's The Journal in a July 1956 story in which Canadian TV producer and director Ross McLean recalled his time producing the CBC series, Stopwatch and Listen, according to WorldHistories.net. "What was it like? Well, it was satire, sort of," MCLean said of the show. "It was done in a mock documentary form. I thought perhaps I had invented something. A mockumentary, I went around saying, hoping the word would catch on."
The term gained mainstream notoriety when director Rob Reiner used it during interviews to explain his 1984 feature mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap.
Ahead of Stumble, check out these other mockumentary sitcoms
The mockumentary format notably infiltrated American sitcoms in 2005 with Greg Daniels' adaptation of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's BBC sitcom, The Office (2001). The massive success of the U.S. version of The Office on NBC ignited a golden era of mockumentary comedies that all adopted the single-camera, confessional style of storytelling to frame each one's particular concept.
In 2009, Daniels and Michael Schur launched Parks and Recreation on NBC, highlighting small-town bureaucracy as seen through the lens of civil servant Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), who worked for the Parks Department in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. The series ran for seven seasons and amassed 16 Emmy nominations.
In 2024, NBC's St. Denis Medical adopted the format to tell the story of committed yet exhausted doctors and nurses at an underfunded hospital in Oregon. A year later, The Paper, Peacock's original spinoff of The Office, joined the mockumentary format lineup, debuting in September of 2025 and focusing on the underdog team of reporters and journalists behind fictional struggling newspaper, the Toledo Truth Teller.
The next mockumentary sitcom, Stumble, debuts November 7 at 8:30/7:30c on NBC.
All about the mockumentary sitcom, Stumble
Set in the highly competitive world of junior college cheerleading, Stumble charts the rise, fall, and goal to rise again of Courteney Potter (Jenn Lyon), who says she "was one championship shy of being the winningest coach in college cheer history" before a video of her partying with her students went viral and she was fired.
Courteney now has to start from the bottom at a tiny junior college, where she recruits a ragtag team of misfits that she hopes to mold into cheer excellence.
Co-starring with Lyon is Saturday Night Live alum Taran Killam as Courteney's husband, Boone E. Potter. Ryan Pinkston, Jarrett Austin Brown, Anissa Borrego, Arianna Davis, Taylor Dunbar, and Georgie Murphy also star, while Kristin Chenoweth has a recurring guest-star role.
RELATED: All the Guest Stars Appearing on Stumble in the Cheerleading Sitcom's Debut Season
Where can I watch other mockumentary sitcoms?
If you're looking for some mockumentary sitcoms to watch before Stumble premieres on November 7 at 8:30/7:30c on NBC, you can stream seasons of The Office, Parks and Recreation, St. Denis Medical, and The Paper on Peacock now!
