General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Clark and Michael

Clark and Michael is an American mockumentary web series starring Michael Cera and Clark Duke as fictionalized versions of themselves, two best friends determined to become successful Hollywood writers and producers who awkwardly stumble through the development of a TV show. It was a CBS Interactive original web series that began streaming for free on the website clarkandmichael.com on May 24, 2007, with a new webisode posted every Wednesday.¹

Key fact	Detail
Format	Mockumentary web series, 10 episodes of about 10 minutes each, filmed on handheld cameras by friends of the two leads²
Stars	Michael Cera (of Arrested Development) and Clark Duke, playing themselves as struggling screenwriters¹^•³
Premiere	May 24, 2007, on clarkandmichael.com, a CBS Interactive original; new webisode every Wednesday¹
Origin	The pilot was Duke's film school thesis film in spring 2006; the series was sold to CBS in 2007⁴
Guest stars	Tony Hale, Andy Richter, Jonah Hill, David Cross, Patton Oswalt, John Francis Daley, and Joe Lo Truglio, among others¹
Recognition	Named one of TIME's Top 10 Viral Videos of 2007; won Best Comedy at TV Guide's Inaugural Online Video Awards⁵^•⁶

Spoilers

Premise and style

The series follows Clark and Michael, two aspiring producers who believe their own hype about a big idea for a TV show but do little in the way of actually making the program.⁷ The duo, convinced they are pitching the next big hit, is in fact clueless about the development process.¹ The show they try to pitch is fictional, as are some of the networks they pitch it to; the comedy comes from the pair's bad luck and slow-building desperation.⁶

The production was deliberately small-scale. Each episode runs about 10 minutes, and the show was filmed on handheld cameras by friends of Duke and Cera.² Reviewers noted that the dialogue sounds improvised, complete with hesitation, stammering, and mumbling, a style it shared with other online series of the period such as We Need Girlfriends and Jake and Amir.⁸ A Wired comparison with the rejected pilot Nobody's Watching, which had a nearly identical premise, described Clark and Michael as working in the single-camera documentary style.⁹

Production history

The pilot began as Clark Duke's thesis film in film school in the spring of 2006. Duke said in a later interview that he and Cera sold the show to CBS in 2007 and made the remaining episodes then.⁴ According to a 2007 Guardian profile of Cera, the mockumentary, which the two wrote together, was originally planned for the adult comedy channel Adult Swim and was finally made as a web series for CBS.¹⁰ Cera came to the project straight off Arrested Development, and CBS gave the web-only series a green light and distributed it online.¹¹ The series was produced for CBS's Innertube network.³

The guest cast drew on the Los Angeles comedy scene: Tony Hale, David Cross, Andy Richter, Jonah Hill, Patton Oswalt, John Francis Daley, and Joe Lo Truglio all made appearances.¹ Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz appeared as a character named Ramsay in two episodes, and Eric Wareheim, Tim Heidecker, Jake Johnson, and Derek Waters also appeared.⁷

Reception and afterlife

Contemporary attention came mostly from the novelty of Cera's involvement. TIME placed the series among its Top 10 Viral Videos of 2007, writing that it delivered "a healthy dose of deadpan comedy wunderkind Michael Cera" in weekly webisodes in which he and Duke played two inept roommates trying to get their first television series produced.⁵ The series won Best Comedy at TV Guide's Inaugural Online Video Awards.⁶ A Ball State University study of web series later grouped Clark and Michael with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog as series that, unlike most webisode productions of the time, benefited from professional production values and expertise.¹²

The run ended after one season. In a June 2007 interview, Cera said he did not think they would make more episodes, explaining that Duke was under contract for the television series Greek, which would probably prevent him from making more even if he wanted to.¹³ Duke later said the show did well despite CBS not promoting it or doing a whole lot for it.¹⁴ The complete series later circulated on YouTube, uploaded by CBS, and retrospective pieces have described it as an early comedic web series that flew under the radar.²

The series is now cited as one of the first comedic web series. The Interrobang's history of web series pioneers credited Duke and Cera with conceiving one of the first comedic web series as part of Duke's film school studies.¹¹ Duke himself noted in a later interview that the show came out around the time YouTube was emerging, when viewers had to click through links on cbs.com to reach it, and that the show's YouTube view numbers remain modest years later.¹⁵^•¹⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Comedy, drama, and general-genre web series › Premiered 1999 to 2016

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?