TL;DR: The Paper is like The Office and Parks and Rec blended for 2025—hilarious and heartfelt, but too rushed for its own good. Binge it, love it, then wish it had twice as many episodes.

There’s something inherently weird about watching a mockumentary in 2025. Not because the format has aged badly—if anything, it’s weathered the years better than laugh tracks or multi-cam sitcoms—but because it now carries a kind of cultural baggage. Every cut to a reaction face, every deadpan into the camera lens, every awkward silence has the ghost of The Office hovering in the background. It’s impossible not to see Steve Carell’s shadow when a boss makes a fool of themselves, or to hear echoes of Leslie Knope’s unhinged optimism whenever someone tries to drag a dysfunctional workplace into the sunlight. Which is why The Paper, Greg Daniels’ latest return to the genre he perfected, feels like both a loving throwback and a slightly frantic remix.

And here’s the hook: it works. Mostly.

I binged all ten episodes of The Paper in a single sitting—Peacock decided to drop them all at once, because apparently no one in charge of streaming learned a single thing from the slow-burn magic of 2000s network TV. And I’ll admit, it was a breezy binge. I laughed. I winced. I even got weirdly sentimental about the fate of a dying Ohio newspaper, which I did not expect to feel about anything in 2025 outside of maybe print zines about vinyl revivalists. But when the credits rolled on episode ten, I also had that hollow Netflix-y sensation of oh, that was fun, but I kind of wish it stuck around longer. Like devouring an entire sleeve of Oreos: satisfying, but gone before you realize it.

Let’s rewind. The Paper follows Oscar Martinez—yes, that Oscar from Dunder Mifflin, reprised by Oscar Nuñez—as he jumps ship from a paper supply company to an actual newspaper: The Toledo Truth Teller. The gag, of course, is that this once-proud institution now barely fills half a rented floor in a building it used to own, its glory days long since sold off for parts. It’s a familiar Daniels setup: a workplace full of absurd personalities, tethered together by the stubborn optimism of a true believer. This time that believer is Ned Sampson, played with lanky charm by Domhnall Gleeson, who manages to embody Michael Scott’s clumsy enthusiasm and Leslie Knope’s idealism without feeling like a direct ripoff.

The premise sings because it’s timely. We’re living in an era when newspapers are being hollowed out, not just by the internet, but by hedge funds, conglomerates, and the endless treadmill of engagement-baiting “content.” The opening credits montage—newspapers as fish wrap, dog training pads, and birdcage liners—lands as both a cheap laugh and a gut punch. You don’t have to be a journalism major to feel the sting of a noble profession turned into recyclable trash. And honestly, that’s the cleverest thing The Paper does: it uses the mockumentary form to satirize an industry in freefall, in the same way The Office skewered corporate soullessness and Parks and Rec poked fun at small-town bureaucracy.

But here’s the rub: ten episodes isn’t enough.

I grew up on the long seasons of The Office. Those arcs had room to breathe. Jim and Pam’s will-they-won’t-they stretched across years, giving us tiny, aching moments that built into something monumental. Parks and Rec’s best arcs—Ben and Leslie, Ron and his libertarian heart softening just enough to let people in—took entire seasons to land. The Paper, by contrast, has to sprint. The love story gets rushed. Rivalries flip too quickly. Characters reveal their vulnerabilities before we’ve really had time to buy their façades. It’s as if Daniels wrote a four-season show and then had to compress it into ten bite-sized episodes because that’s how Peacock wanted it served.

That’s not to say the characters don’t land. Chelsea Frei’s Mare Pritti, a military vet turned wannabe journalist with a granola-bar wrapper problem, is pitch-perfect as Ned’s foil. Tim Key, playing a hilariously inept yes-man named Ken, nails every self-important monologue with smarmy precision. Sabrina Impacciatore brings bite as Esmeralda, the office gossip turned reluctant antagonist. And of course, Oscar Nuñez slides back into Oscar Martinez like he never left, his dry wit still the perfect seasoning for chaos. The issue isn’t the performances—it’s that we don’t get enough time to live with them. Arcs that deserved slow-cooked tenderness are instead microwaved.

Still, I can’t be too harsh. I laughed harder at The Paper than at any sitcom in recent memory. Daniels has a knack for surrounding his characters with little absurdities that feel painfully real. A newsroom brainstorming session devolves into a fight about whether cat memes count as “community engagement.” A big exposé gets killed because the parent company doesn’t want to upset their envelope suppliers. At one point, a character earnestly pitches a TikTok series where journalists just… read the headlines aloud. These moments aren’t just funny; they sting with truth.

And that’s maybe why the speed doesn’t entirely sink the show. We’re used to binging now. We’re used to quick dopamine hits, quick payoffs, story arcs resolved in a weekend. Maybe it’s fitting that The Paper, a show about an outdated medium struggling to adapt, has itself been forced to bend to the logic of streaming. In its own way, that irony feels baked into the DNA of the series.

Do I wish The Paper had been allowed to run for 20+ episodes a season? Absolutely. Would it have been better as a weekly release? Almost certainly. But I can’t deny that in the space it was given, it delivers something earnest, sweet, and genuinely funny. It’s comfort food TV with just enough bite to remind you of the world outside your screen.

So here’s where I land: The Paper doesn’t reinvent the mockumentary wheel, but it spins it fast enough to still feel fresh. It’s a worthy descendant of The Office and Parks and Rec, even if it sometimes feels like a speedrun of their greatest hits. If this first season is just a teaser for more to come—and I hope Peacock sees fit to renew it—then I’m ready to keep subscribing to The Toledo Truth Teller’s brand of chaos.

Final Verdict: 

The Paper is funny, warm, and sharper than it has any right to be, but it suffers from the binge-drop model that shortchanges its characters and arcs. Greg Daniels hasn’t lost his touch, but this show deserves the long runway its predecessors had. For now, it’s a fast, delightful ride—one I wish lasted a little longer.