Mockumentaries and fake histories have been around nearly forever. Read the opening to Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers for one of the best old-school, fake "this is a true story" openers. Fargo opens with a classic fake-out that a lot of people believed, and the campaign for the original The Blair Witch Project was all about insisting it was real. Even the first films ever shot were staged-as-real events, since setting up those old, boxy cameras took forever. It doesn’t hurt that filmmakers like Christopher Guest have perfected improv as a filmable craft. Audiences like that line blurred, and the best mockumentaries are constantly playing with reality.

Here are seven masterclasses in suspended disbelief.

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What We Do in the Shadows (2019)

Johnny Brugh in 'What We Do In The Shadows'

If you love the 2014 film of the same name that inspired What We Do in the Shadows, then the FX series will suck you in too. It’s a perfect mix of horror and comedy, somehow managing to carve a believable reality from fictional monsters. It doesn’t hurt that the horror elements are more visceral than we’re used to in most horror comedies, with effects to rival any other show on TV. The show even perfectly addresses the often over-the-top personalities of these vampires as they’re walking anachronisms, used to living on their own plane. Now, faced with a documentary crew, they’re forced to (occasionally, anyway) see themselves for whom they really are.

All You Need is Cash (1978)

all you need is cash
Image via NBC

This is Spinal Tap, and even the earlier TV mockumentary Bad News, owe a lot to this Eric Idle-penned who's-who of 1970s comedy. With cameos from the early SNL cast, to music acts like Paul Simon and Mick Jagger, All You Need is Cash tells the story of The Rutles, who bear a slight visual, but very close career resemblance to The Beatles. The film's true magic is a series of perfect Beatles pastiches, written by musical genius Neil Innes, which are so perfectly-produced as to make this obvious farce still seem somehow grounded. The film also gets incredibly meta when real-life Beatle George Harrison shows up as a newsman.

A Mighty Wind (2003)

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Image Via Warner Bros.

The magic of putting well-produced music into a fake documentary as the film's anchor is nothing new to Christopher Guest. After all, he was behind This is Spinal Tap, and is an accomplished musician. A Mighty Wind changes things up, though, adding a new layer to the reality-behind-the-fiction. This story of aging folk musicians features music written and performed by everyone involved. If it's a group like Mitch and Mickey (Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara) singing, it's something they wrote together. Always a master of collaboration, Guest perfected his sculpting of false reality with A Mighty Wind.

Waiting for Guffman (1996)

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Image via Sony Pictures Classics

You either knew a theater kid growing up, or you were the kind of kid who identified way too well with the try-hard Corky St. Clair and his cohorts. Christopher Guest waited twelve years to revisit the mockumentary format, but he picked the perfect subject matter for his return: community theater. Taking place in fictional Blaine, Missouri, Waiting for Guffman tells the story of a New York theater director bringing his talents to small-town America. The true triumph is taking truly musical actors like Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara and instructing them to play poor performers, all while having them improvise based on an outline. It’s the true mark of a good actor when they can play a bad one, and Waiting for Guffman manages to shine with brilliant-bad performances, while also making us love these characters. Guffman may well have relaunched an interest in the mockumentary style, and it even inspired some real-life amateur actors to put on the play from the film, entitled “Red, White and Blaine.”

Tanner '88 (1988)

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Image via HBO

Garry Trudeau, best known as the creator of the comic strip “Doonesbury,” created Tanner '88, a satire of political campaigns in response to growing political unrest during the Reagan years. Directed by Robert Altman, the mini-series is a mix of scripted and improvised moments, as well as encounters with real political figures of the time, like Bob Dole and Jesse Jackson . It's stark and dark, but hilariously so. Producing a mockumentary about the 1988 presidential campaign as it was happening, often where it was happening, made for an intensely real-feeling set of episodes. The mini-series’ sense of humor thrives on this tension, and it’s hard to keep your eyes off it. It's almost an American precursor to the BBC classic The Thick of It, with a lot less creative swearing.

This is Spinal Tap (1984)

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Image via Embassy Pictures

Known best for lines like "These go to 11," This is Spinal Tap is the story of a heavy metal group hitting it biggish, falling apart, and trying to mend things. This is Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer exercising years of collaboration as the sketch group The Credibility Gap. Written and improvised by the group, and directed by Rob Reiner, the film, while often a slow burn, is filled with cameos like Fran Drescher, Billy Crystal and the always show-stealing Fred Willard, and it helped launch an entire sub-genre of comedy TV. Ricky Gervais was a fan (though he didn't realize it was improvised) and, likely, would never have started the original The Office in 2001 if it weren't for the boys in Spinal Tap.

Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)

The cast of Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Image via Universal Pictures

If you’re going to put a TV star like Andy Samberg in a lead role of a fake documentary, you should at least pile on the star power. With appearances by Sarah Silverman, Adam Levine and Usher, it becomes so unbelievably overwhelmed with star power that you’re forced to sit back and accept this new reality. Taking a cue from This is Spinal Tap with songs like “I’m So Humble,” and “Mona Lisa,” which solidly walk the line between perfectly-produced songs and inherently goofy performances, Pop Star takes the torch from its forebears and sort of just sets fire to the building. What it lacks in subtlety, it balances out with a solid thruline about friendship and love.