docudrama

plural docudramas · alternative docu-drama

1. UScountableuncountablebroadcastingA type of drama (a film, play, television show, etc.) that combines elements of documentary and drama, to some extent showing real events and to some extent using actors performing recreations of documented events.First known use mid 20th c.

   "Docudrama" is by its nature a confusing genre—neither fish nor fowl, and thus lacking either taste or substance.

   2008 December 30, Bob Sommer, “The Education of David Frost”, in CounterPunch, Petrolia, Calif.: CounterPunch, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 10 Feb 2025

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   What he saw was a school system in defeat, in panic. When a man must fight he reaches for such weapons as he has and understands. Early last summer, Phil[lip C.] Lewis stripped the cover off his typewriter, squared a sheet of paper on the platen, and invented DocuDrama. It's a dramatization of the fix the schools are in.

   1957 September 28, William A[nthony] Caldwell, “The best investment society can make …”, in Bergen Evening Record, volume 63, number 98, Hackensack, N.J.: The Bergen Evening Record Corp., →OCLC, week-end magazine section, page 2, column 3

   A docu-drama entitled "Crisis in the Local Congregation" on extremism was presented by a group from the Fourth Avenue Methodist Church under the directorship of Mr. Martin Bard.

   1967, “Morning Session: January 18, 1967”, in Journal of the Twenty-seventh Annual Meeting of the Board of Missions of the Methodist Church and the National Division, World Division, Woman’s Division, Joint Commission on Education and Cultivation: Netherland Hilton Hotel, Cincinnati, Ohio and Sheraton Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky: January 11–20, 1967, New York, N.Y.: Board of Missions, The Methodist Church, →OCLC, page 28

   Ever since Roots, historical "docu[-]dramas" and "mini-series" have flourished on television and competed successfully for top ratings. […] "History" is not sick. On the other hand, the teaching of history may be.

   1987 February–March, Bernard A[llen] Weisberger, “American History is Falling Down”, in American Heritage, volume 38, number 2, Rockville, Md.: American Heritage Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 10 Sep 2025, page 32, column 1

   In other words, docudrama covers an amazing variety of dramatic forms, bound together by two things. They are all based on or inspired by reality, by the lives of real people, or by events that have happened in the recent or not too distant past. Furthermore, they would seem to have a higher responsibility to accuracy and to truth than does fiction.

   1999, “Introduction”, in Alan Rosenthal, editor, Why Docudrama?: Fact-fiction on Film and TV, Carbondale; Edwardsville, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, →ISBN, page xv

   And docudramas would be the perfect epitaph because, though Norman Kingsley Mailer dreamed of being the monarch of the American novel, he was finally the king of faction, the man whose greatest books, a nightmare for any librarian hoping neatly to classify as fiction or non-fiction, consolidated the now standard view that reporting is as important to storytelling as invention.

   2007 November 12, Mark Lawson, “The king of faction”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 10 Oct 2025

   Synonyms: drama documentary, dramamentary