After the sad departure of the beloved sitcom, The Office, which ended with its last episode in late May of 2013, I wasn’t sure if we’d ever get another show that matched the excellence that the old show once had. Until Peacock announced the new Office spinoff that was in the works and had an expected release date of September 4, 2025.

These two shows are very different in lots of ways. Knowing that they have a 12-year gap in between them, it makes sense that production styles have changed astronomically, as well as the actors available. Speaking of actors, one of the actors from The Office, Oscar Nuñez, who plays Oscar Martinez in both sitcoms, has returned for the new show that’s in the same world or universe, per se, as The Office. Of course, don’t go into this show expecting it to have the same humor, same actors, and same setting as The Office does, because The Paper offers a whole new cast, setting, and humor, some would say. The show stars Domhnall Gleeson, Sabrina Impacciatore, and Chelsea Frei as some of the main characters on the show. Instead of being fictitiously located in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at a paper company called Dunder Mifflin, The Paper is in Toledo, Ohio, at a newspaper company called The Toledo Truth Teller. Domhnall Gleeson’s character, Ned Sampson, is the newspaper’s new editor-in-chief, who loves journalism and is dedicated to reviving their form of media in the town of Toledo.
The show follows a similar plot to The Office once did, having some absurd moments and questionable actions by the characters, as the documentary crew from both shows captures it all. I’ve already watched every episode of the show, and it surprised me by how much effort the creators put into making sure the show had this certain charm that The Office didn’t have. I wish the show could’ve made a better choice of setting. I feel as if putting the show in a similar location to The Office, the overall atmosphere of the new show doesn’t seem all that different, which to me shows some lack of creative thought being put into the show. Although the show offers a nice sense of humor throughout the episodes, I found most of the humor pretty funny, but not the same kind of laughter as The Office once had me in. I’m not saying that The Office is technically better than The Paper; both of the sitcoms have something special about them that makes them different from other sitcoms. I believe that I saw more drama-based humor in The Paper in the first season than I did in the first season in The Office. I hoped that after watching the whole first season of The Paper, Peacock would decide to renew the show and give it some more time looking after Ned’s story and progress of being the boss and the newspaper’s staff, and how they grow as journalists. Thankfully, Peacock did announce a renewal of the show before its episode one release on Sept. 14, 2025.
Unfortunately, the only bad part of this is that we’ll probably have to wait another year or the second season to premiere, but at least the sitcom will continue to prove its worth in the world of television. The Paper has been a great sitcom to pass the time with, and on the plus side includes a familiar character, a similar plot, and references the old show from time to time for a blast to the past, in able to revisit what once was while loving what’s new.