The Paper Review: Charming, Occasionally Cringe, and Heartfelt

Most of the marketing materials you’ll see for Peacock’s new comedy The Paper will probably tout its connection to previous NBC megahit The Office. After all, the show hails from the same creators (Greg Daniels and Michael Komen), features one of the long-running comedy’s secondary characters, and is told in basically the same mockumentary format that was groundbreaking when The Office did it, but is seemingly everywhere now. But its spin-off status is actually the least interesting thing about this series, which is kinder, warmer, and altogether more aspirational than its predecessor ever managed. And at the end of the day, The Paper doesn’t need its The Office-related bona fides to succeed and generally shines brightest when you manage to forget that the two are connected at all.

To its credit, this series is a spin-off only in the vaguest, most technical sense. It turns out that Dunder Mifflin was purchased by a Toledo-based company called Enervate immediately before the pandemic. Now they deal in a whole different kind of paper: A gangbusters bathroom tissue business known as Softees and the slowly decaying Toledo Truth Teller, a formerly successful local newspaper that now boasts a mere handful of employees and has to share office space with the toilet paper sales team in a building that it used to own entirely. The same documentary crew who filmed The Office heads to Toledo to make a follow-up, and voila, The Paper is born.

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The story kicks off with the arrival of Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson), the Truth Teller’s new Editor-in-Chief, a former (yes, really) toilet paper salesman with a journalism degree who dreams of returning the storied newspaper to its glory days as a trusted community resource. (His role model is literally Clark Kent instead of Superman) He takes over a business that’s little more than wire-service stories, internet clickbait, and online ads, with a staff that’s woefully inexperienced and seriously lacking in resources.

Interim managing editor Esmeralda (Sabrina Impacciatore) is churning out poorly written Buzzfeed-style sponcon content at TTTOnline, with just two reporters keeping the print edition running: former Stars and Stripes veteran Mare (Chelsea Frei) who wants to do real journalism but spends most of her time fitting wire stories into the pre-existing space on their ad-filled front page and the aging Barry (Duane R. Shepard Sr.), a relic from the old days of the paper’s greatness who now spends more time napping than breaking stories.

The paper’s non-editorial staff is comprised of Nicole (Ramona Young) in circulation, Detrick (Melvin Gregg) in ad sales, and a shockingly robust accounting division that includes Adelola (Gbemisola Ikumelo), Adam (Alex Edelman), and Oscar (Oscar Nunez), who also happened to work at another paper company most of us are already familiar with.

Luckily for the Truth Teller, Ned’s enthusiasm for their mission (and his belief in their communal capabilities) is contagious. He encourages the non-editorial staff to break out of their established roles and give journalism a try, promising bylines of their own and a rededication to community as the Truth Teller returns to its local roots. And as they spearhead local investigations into corporate fraud, political waste, and product safety, the group slowly begins to transform into something greater than the sum of its parts.

Much the same as in the world of the show, it’s Gleeson’s performance that holds the disparate pieces of The Paper together. His Ned most often plays the likeable straight man to his strange and chaotic coworkers, but his charm is genuine and his idealism never comes across as fake or forced. He and Frei have outstanding chemistry and a great future as this series’s complicated office romance. (We’ll just ignore the couple of episodes in which Ned thinks Mare is asexual, because, let’s face it, that subplot is dumb.)

A love letter to journalism and local media, the ten-episode first season (all of which were available for review) is one part workplace comedy, one part will they won’t/they romance, and one part celebration of an industry that has taken more than its fair share of lumps in recent years. Yes, it’s problematic that, at least theoretically, half the Truth-Teller’s team is working for the paper free during the gaps in their real day jobs, and the show could more sharply connect the struggles of the steadily collapsing media industry with the larger problems we’re facing in the world. But the show refuses to punch down at its characters or the work they’re doing, even when they’re chasing stories that may seem insignificant in the face of…everything else in the world. Instead, it celebrates them, allowing them to be genuinely joyful and passionate about the opportunity to do work they believe in. It’s hard to argue that we couldn’t use quite a bit more of that kind of thing on our screens these days.

Peacock has already renewed the series for a second season ahead of its premiere, and The Paper does indeed have some work to do during its proverbial offseason. Impacciatore is a talented performer, but her selfish attempts to sabotage Ned often feel tonally at odds with what the rest of the series is doing. (She fares better in episodes like “Churnalism,” where she’s actually given the chance to do something more than anyone expects of her.) Several of the series’ secondary characters could use more fleshing out, and Nunez deserves the chance to play an Oscar who does something besides serve up The Office Easter eggs every episode or two. But these are eminently solvable problems, and the show’s already charming enough to assume that it’s likely just going to get better from here.

The Paper’s opening credits sequence features the names of the show’s various cast members and producers splashed alongside footage of newspapers being used for a variety of everyday, sometimes demeaning tasks. The Truth Teller lines birdcages, papers over windows, helps house-train a puppy, wraps fish, and provides shade for someone at the pool. On a different sort of show, this introduction might be seen as callous, an indictment that such undignified ends are all that this newspaper, that journalism, is good for. The Paper chooses to look at it another way: At one point, the paper was so integrated in our day-to-day lives that every family had one, and it served functions well beyond simply delivering the news to households. (It’s taken as read, I think, that all those people would have read that edition before it found its second life.) Maybe we can’t go back, and we’ll never have anything like that again, but isn’t it nice to dream?

The Paper premieres September 4 on Peacock.

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