You ever watch a TV show or a movie and the characters are watching something that only exists in that universe? Like Rochelle, Rochelle in Seinfeld or M.I.L.F Island from 30 Rock or The Alan Brady Show in The Dick Van Dyke Show or Mock Trial with Judge Reinhold from Arrested Development? Remember when Stanley Tucci plays an actor studying Adrian Monk to play him in a movie on Monk? They’re adapting the Nikki Heat books in that one plotline of Castle. That kind of thing.
Well, creating a fake show or movie within a show or movie is an art, and today, we are here to celebrate that art.
For your fake watching pleasure, we present the ten best fake crime movies and TV shows, in movies and TV shows. Ten might not seem like enough, as there are many, many more great ones in the annals of entertainment. But these are the ten which we, at CrimeReads, find the best in terms of satire and pertinence to our site. Also, there’s a bonus entrant at the end.
This list is not ranked, because how would I do that? I haven’t seen these things! Come on.
Firestorm (Seinfeld)
I love the fake movies on Seinfeld. Ponce de Leon! Prognosis Negative! Death Blow! The Pain and the Yearning! The Muted Heart! But I would really like to see Firestorm, an action flick that everybody in Seinfeld loves. It’s got everything: Harrison Ford, who “jumped out of the plane and was shooting back up at them while he was falling,” an “underwater escape,” and a helicopter landing on top of a car! It’s “a hell of a picture.” Man oh man. Sure sounds like it. Just don’t spoil it for people!
Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime (Forgetting Sarah Marshall)
In my opinion, the funniest part of Forgetting Sarah Marshall is the fake CSI-style TV show that the actress Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) stars in. It’s called Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime. (There’s another show in this universe, too, Crime Scene: Phoenix.) Her co-star is Billy Baldwin (as himself). SAY no more.
Brazzos (Only Murders in the Building)
I would give all my money away to see just one whole episode of Brazzos, the fake show on Only Murders in the Building that Steve Martin’s character Charles Hayden Savage had worked on for most of his career. Aristotle Brazzos is a tough, shades-wearing, leather-jacket-clad, brilliant detective (in the vein of Telly Savalas’s Kojak, I’d wager). What’s his catchphrase? “This takes this case in a whole new direction.” (I’d also give all my money and all of someone else’s money to see more of Season 3’s fake murder mystery musical Death Rattle Dazzle. I actually think a full run of Death Rattle Dazzle should be this year’s NBC live musical event.)
The 14 Fists of McCluskey (Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood)
I love Quentin Tarantino’s 1969–set LA epic Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, and one of the things I love the most about it is Rick Dalton, Leonardo DiCaprio’s washed-up actor protagonist, who had once starred in a black-and-white Western TV show called Bounty Law and now moonlights as a villain-of-the-week on other people’s shows. He’ll go on to make Spaghetti Westerns, but before that, he has a relatively successful turn in a violent World War II film called The 14 Fists of McCluskey in which he plays an American Sergeant named Mike Lewis who, among other unknown plot points, takes a flamethrower across enemy lines and barbecues a room full of Nazis. “Anybody order fried sauerkraut?” Classic. Tarantino, a true maestro for chillingly-accurate mid-century movie details, also lists that the supporting cast includes Van Johnson, Rod Taylor, Sal Mineo. The realism!
Chicago Homicide (Curb Your Enthusiasm)
Larry David can’t stop making fake TV shows and movies. And, in a late season of Curb, one appears. The very, very schlocky TV procedural Chicago Homicide is a joke about Dick Wolf’s Chicago TV series empire. “People will watch anything with ‘Chicago’ in the title, it’s been proven,” Larry’s censor girlfriend Bridget (Lauren Graham) tells him, and she seems right. This fake show features Ali Larter and Jerry O’Connell as two, you guessed it, homicide detectives. In Chicago.
Habeus Corpus (The Player)
Robert Altman’s The Player, a black comedy about murder and Hollywood studio politics, has a great fake movie! Tim Robbins plays Griffin Mill, a greedy executive, and he gets a pitch for a movie called Habeas Corpus that the writers swear will be an Oscar contender. It’s going to be a legal drama about capital punishment starring no-name actors, and the main character will die. Because of complicated machinations that I will not get into here, Mill agrees to let them make it. By the time we see a clip of it, Mill has obviously already got his hands on it and turned it into more mainstream fare, because it now stars Julia Roberts in the lead role of a death row inmate. Originally on trial for killing her husband, she is horrified when the opposing counsel pushes for the death penalty. Then she lands on death row. The movie also stars Bruce Willis, Peter Falk, Susan Sarandon, Louise Fletcher, and Ray Walston.
Looking for LaToya (Insecure)
Issa Rae’s wonderful HBO series Insecure does a lot of brilliant things, including featuring a fake TV true-crime docuseries called Looking for LaToya that all the characters bingewatch. LaToya is a 26-year-old Black woman who mysteriously vanishes outside a Red Lobster. A pitch-perfect true crime satire, Rae had designed the fake show to underscore the lack of media coverage and care around real-life disappearances of Black women.
The Rural Juror (30 Rock)
30 Rock is a GOLDMINE of fake TV shows and movies. The Dealbreakers Talk Show? The aforementioned M.I.L.F Island? The game shows Celebrity Homonym and Goldcase? God Cop?! Queen of Jordan!? Bitch Hunter!? Not to mention the show TGS with Tracy Jordan or all of Tracy Jordan’s movies. BUT if I have to choose one to go on this list (just one, lest this list actually just become a 30 Rock appreciation post), it’s gotta be The Rural Juror. It’s just got to be! The virtually unpronounceable nature of the title The Rural Juror is a running gag throughout a good chunk of the show. In the film, Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) plays a small-time Southern lawyer named Constance Justice. It is an adaptation of the fake Kevin Grisham novel of the same name. (Yes, Kevin Grisham, John’s fake brother, who also penned the fake sequel Urban Fervor. God I love this show.) The movie apparently co-stars Tony Hawk.
Detective Lucerne (Columbo)
I love the Columbo episode Fade Into Murder, in which the actor who plays the eponymous detective protagonist on a crime show called Detective Lucerne kills his wife and Columbo is brought in to solve the crime! Lucerne is the “world’s greatest detective” and he is played by the actor Ward Fowler who is played by William Shatner. Tell me you don’t wish this existed, and I won’t believe you.
Angels With Filthy Souls (Home Alone)
Ah, Angels With Filthy Souls, the James Cagney-esque fake gangster movie that Kevin McAllister puts on when he realizes that he’s got no adults around to stop him. The dialogue, exchanged between two mobsters named Johnny and Snakes, is some of the most memorable in the film. “Keep the change, you filthy animal!!”
BONUS:
Stab (Scream 2, etc.)
I would have been criminally remiss if I didn’t at least mention the Scream movies in this list. Stab, the franchise–within-a-franchise of the Scream cinematic universe. The Scream movies all knit together to make one giant, conceptual mise-en-abyme and outlining all the tendrils of referentiality here will take all day. So, to keep it simple, the events within Scream spawn a book called The Woodsboro Murders (by Gale Weathers), which gets adapted into a film series within the second Scream installment that is almost identical to the first Scream installment. Heather Graham plays Drew Barrymore’s original part, but as the films continue, they allow the films to push the envelope of referentiality to crazy levels.
