When NBC’s adaptation of The Office first debuted in 2005, the series was panned for being a pale and uninspired imitation of its English predecessor. It took an entire season for showrunner Greg Daniels to figure out how to infuse his take on The Office with a quirky, satirical energy calibrated to appeal to American audiences. But once he did, the comedy became a ratings juggernaut for the network, which put Daniels in a position to tackle slightly more original projects.
Unlike Parks and Rec — another Daniels series that was stylistically similar to The Office, but stood on its own — Peacock’s The Paper is a true spinoff that’s working hard to squeeze a few more laughs out of the original American series’ comedic formula. The show feels very much like a product of the streaming era giving people a way to binge (re)watch their favorite sitcoms. At times, The Paper almost seems like it’s trying to be an amalgam of Daniels’ past NBC work — one meant to click with a younger audience nostalgic for a pop cultural moment it wasn’t there to experience in real time. But like The Office and Parks and Rec, The Paper finds its footing after a few episodes and becomes a surprisingly solid (if familiar) bit of easy watching.
In The Paper’s version of Toledo, Ohio, almost everyone uses at least one of the paper-related products made by a company called Enervate. There’s always a need for toilet tissue and toilet seat covers, but in 2025 the town’s citizens don’t exactly feel the same way about their local newspaper. After years of declining readership and slashed budgets the Toledo Truth-Teller has become more of a joke than a reliable source for hard hitting news. But to Ned Sampson (Domhall Gleeson), a relatively recent journalism school graduate who has been stuck working at his father’s cardboard business, the Truth-Teller is an understaffed diamond in the rough whose potential is being squandered.
The Paper follows as Ned sets out to get the Truth-Teller back on its feet with the help of a few volunteers. There’s managing editor Esmeralda Grand (Sabrina Impacciatore), ad sales guy Detrick Moore (Melvin Gregg), head of circulation Nicole Lee (Ramona Young), accountants Adelola Olofin (Gbemisola Ikumelo) and Adam Cooper (Alex Edelman), and overbearing business strategist Ken Davies (Tim Key). Aside from Ned, Mare Pritti (Chelsea Frei) is the only staffer with any real experience working in journalism, but the entire crew is also expected to write stories — even head accountant / Scranton transplant Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez).
In its first few episodes, The Paper feels a lot like a very well polished Office riff whose comedy is rooted in its characters’ eccentricities being caught on camera by the same documentary crew that tailed Dunder Mifflin’s employees for years. None of The Paper’s characters are one-to-one analogues of The Office’s, but the new show’s unhinged workplace dynamics all play as interpolations of what we’ve seen before.
Here, Esmerelda — a woman whose excess enthusiasm is matched only by her narcissism — sucks up all the oxygen in the room in a very Michael Scott fashion. The Paper also presents Ned and Mare as colleagues who can’t quite muster up the courage to admit that there’s a budding romance growing between them. Though Oscar can see that there are a couple of Jim / Pam situationships developing around him, he insists to the documentary crew that he has nothing air-able to say about any of them. That, of course, is not true, but Oscar has always been that sort of guy and The Paper is banking on those familiar beats winning over the franchise’s fans.
It isn’t until The Paper really starts to dig into the business of running a newspaper and the difficulty of turning untrained writers into proper reporters that the series really starts to hit its stride. Getting The Truth-Teller team out of their office and onto the streets opens the show up to more dynamic storytelling and much, much funnier jokes. The entire cast is strong, but Impacciatore shines in particular with an inspired perforce that feels like it was plucked out of one of Parks and Rec’s later seasons. It’s through Esmerelda that the show most often explores what it means to become a thoughtful journalist, and her arc feels emblematic of what The Paper wants to be.
Especially in a post-Abbott Elementary world, The Paper doesn’t feel like a groundbreaking return for this kind of episodic comedy. But even though the series starts slow you can see why NBC gave it a greenlight. The network’s decision to drop all 10 episodes of The Paper all at once rather than weekly actually does quite a bit to help it power through that brief sluggishness. And with The Paper already renewed for a second season, it has already been given the space to get even sharper.
The Paper also stars Duane Shepard Sr., Allan Havey, Nate Jackson, Mo Welch, Eric Rahill, Nancy Lenehan, Molly Ephraim, and Tracy Letts. The entire first season premieres on September 4th.
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