Documentary Now! is television for people who love movies—more specifically, documentary films. This may be a growing niche. Documentary has undergone something of a renaissance in the last ten years, as streaming platforms have focused on bingeable nonfiction films and series that spark detailed, intense debate: Did Robert Durst really murder his wife? Did the stress of captivity really make a killer whale attack its trainer? Was Ma Anand Sheela—the charismatic spokeswoman for the Rajneesh cult in Oregon—truly a sinister leader or just a woman in way over her head? Documentaries have the power to rocket a story directly into the news, serving viewers a portion of life to dissect, examine, start Reddit threads about, and watch on repeat.

A quirky comedy series now entering its third season on IFC, Documentary Now! picks apart these films in a different way. Instead of breaking down the information they present, it scrutinizes their style, offering up laser-accurate parodies of famous works. Each episode re-creates a movie, down to its camera angles and costumery, and can highlight not only the brilliance of lauded documentaries but also their shortcomings. This nerdy, often delightful concept is the brainchild of Saturday Night Live alumni Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and director Rhys Thomas, along with the intrepid cinematographer and director Alex Buono, who has the uncanny ability to mimic the visual style of films from any era.

Helen Mirren, a real sport, introduces every parody as part of a PBS-like showcase for the “world’s most thought-provoking cinema.” The conceit is that these invented documentaries are as magnificent as the films they are aping: The Thin Blue Line, Grey Gardens, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, The War Room. But as the episodes grow increasingly absurd, the documentary form starts to look quite loopy too. Suddenly, you are wondering why the Maysles brothers decided to spend weeks following around two women who live in squalor. And was that an exploitative act, or the stuff of epic cinema? What Documentary Now! is doing, in a subtle way, is probing the idea of greatness. Why do certain films, and filmmakers, get to become part of the canon?

The best of these episodes can forever change the way you watch the source material. Sometimes, you want to run back to the original with a newfound swelling of appreciation. “Final Transmission,” for instance, pays homage to Talking Heads’ 1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense, fondly quoting bassist Tina Weymouth’s blond, shaggy hairstyle and David Byrne’s oversize business suit. Other episodes reveal holes in work you previously admired. “Parker Gail’s Location Is Everything” puts a dark twist on Swimming to Cambodia, Jonathan Demme’s 1987 film about the performance artist Spalding Gray and his elaborate monologues; Hader plays him as a misogynist fabulist, who can’t stop warping the truth, inventing anecdotes about a pushy girlfriend and about encountering a wise woman in the subway, who tells him “you’ll get where you need to go.”

The main creative team behind Documentary Now! is all men, which means that they mostly choose documentaries with male subjects to spoof: The Kid Stays in the Picture, Salesman, History of the Eagles. The scarcity of episodes with a woman at the center is disappointing—I long for them to parody 20 Feet From Stardom—but it does result in quite a few instances of both Hader and Armisen openly dissecting and critiquing patriarchal systems from the inside. Making a documentary can be an act of intrusion and manipulation as much as it can be an act of responsibility and care, and Documentary Now! investigates just how thin that line can be.