How The Office Changed TV And No One Noticed

For decades, nearly all sitcoms were produced in the "three-camera" or "four-camera" format, in which that many cameras would remain mostly stationary and capture whatever happened on a well-lit, fake-looking set, and on videotape no less. That style made episodes of everything from All in the Family to Growing Pains to Everybody Loves Raymond felt like little stage plays. While that method persists on shows like Mom and The Conners, most sitcoms now go for a realistic feel, eschewing the artificial and saturated look of videotape for the warmer look of film (or film-like digital video). They also shoot like a movie, with individual shots of actors acting and reacting instead of performing all at once on a soundstage. 

While a few examples exist before The Office of this "single-camera" style (Malcolm in the Middle, The Andy Griffith Show), the format exploded after The Office (both British and American versions) presented itself as a shot-on-film fake documentary. Utilizing that cinematic style in the years since: Community, The Good Place, Atlanta, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Girls, 30 Rock, New Girl... in short, single-camera has become the dominant format in a way it never was before a "documentary crew" took us inside Dunder Mifflin Scranton.