--- description: Greg Daniels returns with an intermittently promising—but dated—mockumentary set at a struggling Midwestern newspaper. title: 'The Office' Spinoff 'The Paper' Is a True 2000s Throwback image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b1ceed7ffbe5893/6998c93ea97fc0f042a749d7/NUP_205906_03020.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Television](/tag/television/) ## Television Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # _The Office_ Spinoff _The Paper_ Is, For Better or Worse, a True 2000s Throwback  by [Judy Berman](/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close TV Critic Sep 3, 2025 3:30 PM CUT  Sabrina Impacciatore and Domhnall Gleeson in The Paper Sabrina Impacciatore and Domhnall Gleeson in The PaperJohn P. Fleenor—Peacock  by [Judy Berman](/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close TV Critic Sep 3, 2025 3:30 PM CUT NBC’s [_The Office_](https://time.com/7282286/the-office-best-episodes/ "undefined")had such a [huge impact](https://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/16/six-ways-the-office-mattered/ "undefined") that it’s easy to forget the show was, itself, an adaptation. It made major Hollywood players out of cast members like [Steve Carell](https://time.com/5414370/steve-carell-on-office-reboot/ "undefined"), [John Krasinski](https://time.com/collection/most-influential-people-2018/5238188/john-krasinski/ "undefined"), and [Mindy Kaling](https://time.com/7210356/mindy-kaling-running-point-meghan-markle-legally-blonde/ "undefined"), and fostered a generation of brand-name TV creators, including [Mike Schur](https://time.com/5770162/the-good-place-last-good-sit-com-review/ "undefined") and [Justin Spitzer](https://time.com/6252825/not-dead-yet-network-comedies/ "undefined"). Though its single-camera setup was not unprecedented among primetime comedies when it premiered in 2005—[_M\*A\*S\*H_](https://time.com/5261272/mash-reunion-loretta-swit/ "undefined")and [_Arrested Development_](https://time.com/archive/6643509/its-not-tv-its-arrested-development/ "undefined"), among others, got there first—its more naturalistic style quickly became the mark of a modern sitcom. (Even [_Seinfeld_](https://time.com/3934188/seinfeld-original-review/ "undefined")had a laugh track.) And its mockumentary conceit set the conventions of a subgenre that has since yielded [_Parks and Recreation_](https://time.com/5829960/parks-and-recreation-reunion-2020-review-recap/ "undefined"), [_Modern Family_](https://time.com/tag/modern-family/ "undefined"), [_What We Do in the Shadows_](https://time.com/5558376/fx-what-we-do-in-the-shadows-review/ "undefined"),[_Abbott Elementary_](https://time.com/6214182/abbott-elementary-season-2-review/ "undefined"), [_St. Denis Medical_](https://time.com/7172266/st-denis-medical-review/ "undefined"), to name just a few of the biggest hits. Now Greg Daniels, the _Parks and Rec_ and [_King of the Hill_](https://time.com/7306821/king-of-the-hill-season-14-bobby/ "undefined")co-creator who lightened up the British black humor of [Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s original _Office_](https://time.com/3720218/difference-between-american-british-humour/ "undefined")for an American audience, has teamed up with [_Nathan for You_](https://time.com/4989060/nathan-for-you-review/ "undefined")’s Michael Koman for a [spinoff of sorts](https://time.com/6976282/peacock-office-spinoff-greg-daniels-cast-plot-reboots-history-reactions/ "undefined"). _The Paper_, whose full 10-episode first season will arrive on Peacock Sept. 4, follows _The Office_’s documentary crew to the headquarters of a struggling newspaper. There’s something comforting about returning to the familiar rhythms of the last sitcom everyone seemed to be watching at the same time, even if only one member of the original cast, Oscar Nuñez, reprises his role. And _The Paper_ has the potential to evolve over time. But the show feels dated—and not just because so many sitcoms have taken so much from _The Office_ in the 20 years since its debut.  From left: Chelsea Frei, Ramona Young, Melvin Gregg, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Alex Edelman, Eric Rahill, and Oscar Nunez in The Paper John P. Fleenor—Peacock Aside from Nuñez’s Oscar Martinez, what binds the two series together is, well, paper. The PBS filmmakers arrive at the Scranton, Penn. office building that once housed the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company to check in on its subjects, only to learn that the business was absorbed by a Toledo-based corporation, Enervate. (You’d think someone would’ve called ahead.) “Enervate sells products made out of paper,” a smarmy British executive named Ken (Tim Key, recently hilarious in _The Ballad of Wallis Island_, also streaming on Peacock) explains when the crew arrives in Ohio. “So that might be office supplies, that might be janitorial paper—which is toilet paper, toilet-seat protectors—and local newspapers. And that is in order of quality.” This is our auspicious introduction to the _Toledo Truth-Teller_. Once a venerable daily paper with a staff of a thousand, it now has just a handful of remaining employees, who work on a floor occupied mostly by the Softees toilet paper staff. Our Jim Halpert surrogate is Mare Pritti (Chelsea Frei), a sardonic military vet who wrote for _Stars and Stripes_; these days, she copies and pastes Associated Press stories to create the print edition. TTT Online is a totally different product, the domain of flamboyantly Italian managing editor and onetime _Married at First Sight_ participant Esmerelda Grand ([_The White Lotus_ Season 2](https://time.com/6223583/the-white-lotus-season-2-review/ "undefined") standout Sabrina Impacciatore). She keeps the lights on with celebrity clickbait: “You Won’t Believe How Much Ben Affleck Tipped His Limo Driver.” She’s a bit of a Dwight Schrute, always scheming to get what she wants.  Duane Shepard Sr., left, and Oscar Nunez in The Paper John P. Fleenor—Peacock Their new boss is, thankfully, no Michael Scott, though the characters do overlap in their earnest neediness. Played by the versatile [Domhnall Gleeson](https://time.com/4974228/domhnall-gleeson-goodbye-christopher-robin/ "undefined"), in a performance that couldn’t be more different from his memorably unnerving turns in [_The Patient_](https://time.com/6207868/the-patient-fx-hulu-review/ "undefined")and _Black Mirror_, incoming _Truth-Teller_ editor-in-chief Ned Sampson has a sort of aw-shucks, pre-_Ozark_\-Jason-Bateman vibe. A paper-business nepo baby who used to sell Softees, Ned studied journalism in college, idolizes Clark Kent, and has talked his way into an assignment to turn the paper around. What he doesn’t realize is that Enervate has no intention of giving him the budget he would need to properly rebuild the newsroom. (There is one ancient reporter left on staff, Duane R. Shepard Sr.’s Barry, but his workplace behavior suggests early-stage dementia.) Determined to save the _Truth-Teller_ regardless, Ned recruits volunteer reporters from other departments. Sales guy Detrick (Melvin Gregg) has a puppyish crush on deadpan TTT Online data scraper Nicole (Ramona Young, who gets the best joke in the premiere: “You could say that we get more information from the readers than they get from us”). Adelola (Gbemisola Ikumelo) brings some office-rebel attitude. Comedian [Alex Edelman](https://time.com/6964753/alex-edelman/ "undefined") plays Adam, a repressed father of four. Travis’ (Eric Rahill) whole personality is fishing. Despite his resistance to participating in yet another documentary—and the show’s underuse of him, in what is either a callback to _The Office_ or a failure to learn from its mistakes—Oscar ends up inventing number games. None of these people knows the first thing about journalism, which makes Ned and Mare the experts.  Sabrina Impacciatore, left, and Ramona Young in The Paper Aaron Epstein—Peacock Along with the misadventures of inexperienced reporters, _The Paper_ has many rich veins of humor to mine. There is Ned’s rich-kid idealism and the lengths Esmerelda goes to in her efforts to undermine him. There’s some small-Midwestern-city character comedy overlap with _Parks and Rec_. TTT Online opens up a whole worldwide web of internet debacles. Those of us still battling it out in the print-journalism trenches can attest that there’s no shortage of ironic laughs to wring, as well, out of a fourth estate that’s in decline just when America needs it most. Daniels and Koman try each of these angles. What’s odd (especially given that _Nathan for You_ was once the edgiest thing on TV) is how hesitant they seem to get as political about the desperate state of the news media as even the relatively tame, network-primetime [systems sitcoms](https://time.com/7172266/st-denis-medical-review/ "undefined") _Abbott Elementary_ and _St. Denis Medical_ have been about public education and health care. Like a true throwback to the aughts, this show would rather stick to sunnier, more folksy material. There’s more than one glacially paced intraoffice romance plot; Mare and Ned are positioned to be _The Paper_’s answer to Jim and Pam. For those who never got sick of watching Dunder Mifflin’s few sane employees stare exasperatedly into the camera as one of its certifiable weirdos did something unhinged, there’s a good amount of that here, too. _The Office_ fans might find this generic workplace comedy soothing. As a sometime viewer who never got too attached, I found it to be not just a relic, but also a waste of a pretty strong premise.  Domhnall Gleeson in The Paper Aaron Epstein—Peacock _The Paper_ can also be anachronistic when it comes to depicting the media, internet culture, and society in general, as though its scripts had sat in a drawer since the mid-2010s. A rainbow toilet paper gag harkens back to the heyday of compulsory corporate Pride, even as the real world has moved on to an era of “DEI” backlash. A comments-section troll, those quaint creatures from the era before social media enabled angry readers direct access to journalists, shakes up the newsroom. One episode throws Ned into conflict with a teenage local-news blogger, as though Gen Z were finding its voice on Blogspot rather than Substack or TikTok or YouTube. Couldn’t we have gotten a storyline about [ChatGPT’s impact on the media](https://time.com/6554118/congress-ai-journalism-hearing/ "undefined")? The accelerating [crisis in cultural criticism](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/in-defense-of-the-traditional-review "undefined")? The [right-wing war on truth](https://time.com/6985760/autocrats-weaponize-chaos-essay/ "undefined") and, ahem, _truth tellers_? Still, there’s enough to like about what Daniels and Koman have done so far to merit what would likely be a better second season. (_The Office_ didn’t hit its stride until Season 2, either, though today’s streaming execs are not necessarily as patient as their network counterparts were in a more stable era for the entertainment industry.) As the show’s narcissistic heel, Impacciatore’s performance reminds me of Janelle James’ saccharine-cutting turn in _Abbott_. Gleeson, Frei, Key, Gregg, and Young are very good, too (although many of their castmates get lost in the unwieldy ensemble). Scripts improve in the back half of the season. The last line of the seventh episode is so unexpectedly poignant, it made me gasp—and it helps set up a finale that satisfyingly ties up several threads from earlier in the season. Episode 8 wades into the ethical morass of covering the company you work for, as Maretries to report on an epic sewer clog caused by an Enervate product, in a plot that yields both meaty conflict and funny one-liners. Ned to Ken: “I’m not calling your ass-wiping glove ‘the penicillin of personal hygiene.’” _The Paper_ is never going to be _The Office_—in part because its setting is more specific and inherently politicized than Dunder Mifflin, and in part because the world has changed so much in the last 20 years. The more Daniels and Koman embrace those differences, the better the show will be. If there’s hope for the _Toledo Truth-Teller_, then surely there is also hope for _The Paper_. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7311682/the-paper-office-spinoff-review/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7311682/the-paper-office-spinoff-review/"},"headline":"The Office Spinoff The Paper Is, For Better or Worse, a True 2000s Throwback","datePublished":"2025-09-03T15:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:50:50.869Z","description":"Greg Daniels returns with an intermittently promising—but dated—mockumentary set at a struggling Midwestern newspaper.","url":"https://time.com/7311682/the-paper-office-spinoff-review/","keywords":["Television","review","culturepod"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b1ceed7ffbe5893/6998c93ea97fc0f042a749d7/NUP_205906_03020.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Judy Berman","jobTitle":"TV Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/judy-berman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b1ceed7ffbe5893/6998c93ea97fc0f042a749d7/NUP_205906_03020.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"The Paper - Season 1","caption":"The Paper - Season 1","creditText":"John P. 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