http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/arts/television/review-documentary-now-skewers-politicians-and-food-fetishists.html 2016-09-13 23:25:54 Review: ‘Documentary Now!’ Skewers Politicians and Food Fetishists A new season of the mini-mockumentaries from “Saturday Night Live” alumni begins. === In an age of niche television, few shows are more niche than Not much, as it turned out — last season, viewership for “Documentary Now!,” on IFC, ranged from 385,000 the first week (in three-day playback ratings) down to 176,000. But thanks to the niche imperative, this charming, oddball exercise in cultural excavation is back for a second season, beginning on Wednesday. (Two more seasons were ordered before the first began. Since then, the show has picked up a “Documentary Now!” was created by a group of “Saturday Night Live” alumni, including What’s most immediately striking about the show, however, is its attention to detail. The replication of a low-budget, earnestly progressive public TV broadcast is impeccable, abetted by Helen Mirren’s hilariously solemn introductions of the films. And the parodies themselves sometimes miraculously capture the look and feel of the originals. Anyone who has seen the Maysles brothers’ and Charlotte Zwerin’s 1968 classic, “Salesman,” will be floored by the meticulous black-and-white re-creation of it, the new season’s “Globesman.” The comedy can be a little more hit or miss. For the most part, the show doesn’t really make fun of the sainted films and filmmakers it sends up, or seriously question their approaches. (An exception is a Season 2 take on Jonathan Demme’s The results can be a little fuzzy and tepid, as in the “Salesman” parody — the original, a poetic evocation of loneliness and failure, doesn’t lend itself so well to caricature. More successful are broader exercises in which the strategy is to recast the original along baser, more ridiculous lines. In the season premiere, Mr. Armisen and Mr. Hader play craven versions of George Stephanopoulos and James Carville in a takeoff on “The War Room,” running the campaign of an Ohio candidate for governor so unqualified he has to be introduced as “former councilman and grandfather.” The most entertaining of the episodes available for review is based on the least notable model,