Print media is a dying industry, which makes it the perfect setting for a Greg Daniels series. Between The Office and Parks and Recreation, the producer is a pro at finding comedy in slightly run-down towns full of people who have given up on their dreams and are currently working dead-end jobs. The Paper paints a similar picture almost immediately, as its opening credits roll over a montage of people using newsprint for everything besides its intended purpose — wrapping fish in it, using it to clean windows, letting their dog pee on it.
And yet, watching the spinoff of The Office, set in Toledo, Ohio, at a formerly great local paper that now primarily runs wire stories and clickbait like “The Bachelor Contestant Opens Up About Chin Mole,” it feels like the show itself is an outdated relic from another era. When The Office and Parks were originally on the air, NBC dominated the ratings game with the Thursday-night block of comedies it dubbed “Must-See TV.” Back then, network sitcoms were still appointment television, and a single-camera mockumentary was still a novel concept. (When The Office premiered in 2005, Netflix hadn’t even launched as a streaming service yet.) It’s a different world now: we all have thousands of shows at our fingertips whenever we want, NBC has pivoted away almost entirely from comedy and the mockumentary format has been done to death. It all begs the question: where does a show like this fit in 2025?
NBC seems to think, for now at least, that the answer to that is Peacock, where the entire 10-episode first season debuted on Thursday. (The Paper has already been renewed for a second season, probably thanks in part to Daniels’s long history with the network.) The connection to The Office is loose at best; the same documentary crew that spent a decade filming our favorite paper company shows up in Scranton looking to follow up with their subjects, only to discover that Dunder Mifflin has been bought by the Toledo-based Enervate, a company that primarily sells paper products like toilet paper and office supplies but also, for some reason, owns The Toledo Truth Teller. The only Dunder Mifflin employee who decided to stay on and make the move to Ohio is Oscar Martinez (played by Oscar Núñez), and while he gets more screen time than he did as a tertiary character on The Office, he’s not the show’s lead. That’d be Ned Sampson, the paper’s new editor-in-chief (Domhnall Gleeson, doing a surprisingly believable American accent), who doesn’t have the budget to hire real reporters and editors and instead recruits other Enervate employees to take a break from their regular jobs to do a little community journalism.
We’ve Officially Reached the Death of “Must-See TV”
For the first time in years, NBC will not air a sitcom on Thursday nightAnd yet, despite only being mildly related to The Office, The Paper feels like a total ripoff of Daniels’s other shows. Nearly every character feels like a copy-and-pasted version of an Office or Parks and Recreation character. Ned is our Jim, if Jim also had Leslie Knope’s ambition. He’s got a will-they-or-won’t-they thing going on with Mare, the show’s Pam and the only other Truth Teller staffer who actually has journalism experience. Esmeralda (Sabrina Impacciatore of The White Lotus) was overseeing the paper before Ned arrived, so she makes him her mortal enemy and spends most of the series trying to sabotage him; she is extremely Dwight-like in her affinity for vengeance and her cartoonishness. Barry, the sports reporter, is The Paper‘s Creed, and Alex Edelman’s Adam is goofy and kinda dumb in a way that feels very Andy Bernard. Detrick (Melvin Gregg) and Nicole (Ramona Young) are also laying the groundwork for a potential romance, because naturally the show needs to pair up a few secondary characters once they finally let their protagonists get together; they are our Kelly and Ryan or April and Andy. There’s even a hapless British guy who feels extremely similar to David Brent from the U.K. version of The Office (Tim Key, who genuinely sounds like he’s trying to do a Ricky Gervais impression).
Don’t get me wrong: the show is funny. (I’m still laughing at Impacciatore miming a cockroach flipped on its back as she likens Ned to the resilient bug.) The problem is that so much of it bears such a strong resemblance to Daniels’s previous work that it feels phoned in. The sexual tension between Ned and Mare is nowhere near as compelling as Jim and Pam’s romance was because, thanks to Jim and Pam (and Leslie and Ben), we already know they’re eventually going to get together. The Office was a slow burn, one that had the luxury of 22-episode seasons; Jim and Pam’s chemistry felt natural and earned, but since The Paper only has 10 episodes to work with, Ned and Mare feel less believable because they’re forced into pining over one another nearly immediately.
As a whole, The Paper feels like the Mello Yello to The Office‘s Mountain Dew. Maybe over time it’ll develop its own voice and move away from just being “The Office but at a newspaper.” After all, both The Office and Parks and Recreation took a season or two to really find their footing. But workplace sitcoms in general feel dated in 2025, the way laugh tracks and live studio audiences felt old-timey in 2005. (These days, the most popular comedies are actually dramas.) Making one like this feels almost as foolish as trying to launch a print publication nowadays. The Paper has a hard time justifying its own existence — especially when we can just stream old episodes of The Office.
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