When I first heard that Greg Daniels was bringing back the mockumentary format with The Paper, I couldn’t help but be pulled back into my own newsroom nostalgia.
Having cut my teeth at a local paper before moving into financial journalism, I know the peculiar mix of chaos, caffeine, and absurdity that defines a newsroom on deadline.
Pair that with my long-standing affection for The Office — a show that made mundane office life both hilarious and oddly profound — and I was eager to see if lightning could strike twice.
A familiar setup with new stakes
Two decades after we were first introduced to Dunder Mifflin, Daniels and his team have shifted the lens from Scranton to Toledo, Ohio.
The Toledo Truth Teller, once a proud local newspaper, is now a struggling relic, operating under the shadow of its parent company, Enervate — which makes its profit not from journalism, but from its Softie toilet tissue brand.
That setup alone is pure Daniels: weighty issues of dying local journalism wrapped in toilet paper puns.
Enter Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson), a former top salesman of Softie tissues, who has been tapped (against better judgment) to steer the Truth Teller back to relevance.
With only a handful of unqualified employees and a newsroom where breaking news competes with sales quotas, Ned is immediately out of his depth. It’s a classic fish-out-of-water role, though one that takes Gleeson a while to settle into.
Characters that pop (eventually)
Like The Office and Parks and Recreation, The Paper stumbles out of the gate. The first few episodes lean too heavily on stale wire copy jokes and improv-style chaos, making the humor feel forced. But much like Leslie Knope’s journey, the show finds its rhythm as the season goes on.
- Mare Pritti (Chelsea Frei) has potential as the jaded but capable journalist trapped in fluff writing, though she initially gets sidelined.
- Nicole Lee (Ramona Young), tasked with circulation, becomes funnier once her morally bankrupt data-mining subplot unfolds.
- But the real star is Esmerelda Grand (Sabrina Impacciatore). Channelling both camp and menace, she steals nearly every scene she’s in, delivering razor-sharp lines with the theater and extravagance of a Sopranos character on loan to a newsroom. Her battles with Ned give the series its most electric moments.
Adding a layer of awkward chaos is Tim Key’s Ken Davis, the Enervate head of strategy, who channels a David Brent vibe with misplaced confidence and brilliant, cringeworthy moments, perfectly complementing the unfolding newsroom drama.
Oscar Nuñez’s return as the ever-dry Oscar Martinez is also a sly bit of connective tissue (no pun intended) to The Office, though his presence often feels more like a wink to legacy fans than an essential contribution.
When things click
The turning point comes with Episode 5, “Scam Alert!,” where the newsroom actually attempts real reporting — albeit in pursuit of a bizarre online dating scam linked to one of their own.
Suddenly, the series shifts gears from background chuckles to truly engaging workplace comedy.
The back half of the season leans into sharper writing, character-driven humour, and situations that balance the ridiculous with the depressingly real state of modern journalism.
While the show cleverly skewers the decline of local papers and clickbait culture, it doesn’t wallow in cynicism.
In fact, once Ned stops floundering and the supporting cast gets room to breathe, The Paper begins to echo The Office’s unexpected warmth — that underlying belief that work, no matter how absurd, is still about people and connection.
Final verdict
The Paper doesn’t try to outdo The Office, instead carving a slightly different path through the weird world of a dying newspaper.
Though occasionally relying on familiar mockumentary tropes, it steadily grows into its own identity, driven by standout performances, especially Impacciatore’s Esmerelda and Gleeson’s Ned.
For those who love the chaotic charm of office life or still root for print journalism’s survival, The Paper offers enough to keep you watching—even if it’s not quite the headline story we hoped for.
(The Paper premiered on Peacock in the US on September 4, 2025. In the UK, it airs on Sky Max and is also available to stream on Now.)
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