IKEA Heights is an comedic

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 melodrama

Melodrama

The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...

 web series

Web series

A web series is a series of episodes released on the Internet or also by mobile or cellular phone, and part of the newly emerging medium called web television. A single instance of a web series program is called an episode .While the popularity of web series is continuing to rise, the concept...

 created by Dave Seger, Paul Bartunek, Delbert Shoopman, Spencer Strauss and Tom Kauffman for Channel 101

Channel 101

Channel 101 is a non-profit short film festival in Los Angeles, which also has a sister festival in NYC, Channel 101: NY. Channel 101 is a creation of Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab in which participants submit a short film in the format of a pilot under five minutes in length...

. The series is a spoof

Parody

A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 of soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

s and filmed covertly

Guerrilla filmmaking

Guerrilla filmmaking refers to a form of independent filmmaking characterized by low budgets, skeleton crews, and simple props using whatever is available...

 inside the IKEA

IKEA

IKEA is a privately held, international home products company that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture such as beds and desks, appliances and home accessories. The company is the world's largest furniture retailer...

 store in Burbank

Burbank, California

Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

.

Critical reception

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

s Whitney Pastorek said of the series, "[IKEA Heights] is so brilliant and awesome that its glories can really only be diminished by additional words."

Response from IKEA

Madeleine Löwenborg-Frick, a spokesperson for IKEA's Canadian branch, said of the series, "Absolutely, we think it’s funny. We see the humour in it and we approach our own marketing with a similar tongue-in-cheek humour. But unauthorized filming in our stores isn’t a good thing. There’s proper channels that people who want to film in our stores can go through."