Pick of the Week: The Paper and Appointment Viewing

It’s a crying shame that The Paper is stuck on Peacock, the runt of the streaming service litter. Because this show deserves the Abbott Elementary treatment, or at least the growth opportunity of High Potential. But we live in a cruel world. The best new sitcom of the year was dumped without any fanfare onto the one streaming service no one seems to have, as if executives were daring anyone to watch it at all. Damn them, I watched.

The Paper is that spin-off of The Office people have been chattering about for a while. The first trailer dropped in August and the show itself, as previously mentioned, was dumped all in one go in September. A month later, it has already vanished from public memory. It baffles me. You convince Domhnall Gleeson (About Time, Harry Potter) to move into television; you somehow wrangle Ricky Gervais into being executive producer; you give Greg Daniels (the showrunner of the original Office) a chance to recreate magic; and then you dump this beautiful creation on Peacock? Put it on NBC, cowards! Give it 24 episodes, or at least more than 10! 

I heard through the grapevine that The Paper’s 10-episode season was initially meant to be dropped weekly. It is a minor comfort knowing that someone initially had the right idea. But right before the release day, plans were changed and The Paper was made to binge… Why? We may never know. 

Now, I’m not anti-binge per se. It has a time and place. I think a single drop works for shows like Black Mirror or Dept Q, where the content is heavier and darker and, therefore, doesn’t inspire a one-night binge. Like the shows have built-in room to breathe. This model also works for the other end of the spectrum, shows like Nobody Wants This and One Day, that are meant to be watched more like movies anyway. They’re short and sweet and worth an all-nighter. 

I become anti-binge when we start talking about The Bear. Or Adults. Or Severance. Severance is a fantastic example of the power of weekly releases—appointment viewing, if I may. The single drop of season one in 2022 was like a shout into the void. Sure, the show was unestablished and a bit weird, but no one in their right mind would consider it bingeable. It’s actually painful to binge. I’m speaking from experience because my dad and I binged it when it came out. He kept falling asleep and I wanted to tear my hair out. A person can only watch so much of Adam Scott running down white hallways. Remarkably, the AppleTV executives behind Severance took note and changed their ways. So season two was released weekly and became a phenomenon. Everyone was talking about Severance, even after its brutal three-year hiatus. And everyone kept talking about Severance. 

More than anything else, the longevity of a show is what I care about. Longevity in memory, that is. The puppetmasters behind the streaming services can create all the unique viewing experiences they want, but I believe that a show binged is a show easily forgotten. The Bear is one of my favorite TV shows ever made. But can I remember where I was and what I was doing when I first watched it? No. I, for one, want to remember things like that. 

Let us momentarily recall the glorious spring of 2025 when The Pitt, Severance, and season three of The White Lotus were all releasing weekly. Enthusiasm and viewership increased exponentially each week. We were given time to unpack episodes, beg our friends to watch, wait in agony together. The shows took up intentional space in our lives and in our memories. I hadn’t had a stacked weekly schedule like that since Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl consumed my Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays in 2015. That’s television, baby!

Through an incredibly circuitous route, I return to The Paper. It is a show deserving of a primetime slot on NBC or CBS, weekly releases, and teaser trailers played during the commercial breaks of your other favorite shows. My point is that I wish The Paper got a little of what The Office got. Because it’s quite good. Not The Office good, but still very good. Admittedly, I was hesitant at first. I’m not typically a fan of sequels or spin-offs because I automatically assume they’re money grabs. You can take one look at The Paper and know it’s not a money grab. It’s not copying and pasting from The Office; it’s barely connected at all—except for the first five minutes to establish the premise of the pilot. 

But I haven’t even told you what the show is about yet: The Paper follows a dying newspaper in Toledo, Ohio and its ragtag group of non-journalists. The new editor-in-chief, Ned Sampson (played by Domhnall Gleeson with a perfect American accent) shakes things up by aspiring to be a real newspaper. The interim editor he replaced, Esmeralda Grand (played by the Italian Sabrina Impacciatore), is furious that she’s being made to actually work and tries to sabotage Ned. And Ned’s only ally is a thirtysomething blonde veteran named Mare who shares his passion for journalism. Obviously, they’ll be the Jim and Pam. 

The Paper doesn’t knock your socks off by any means, but it’s endearing and laugh-out-loud funny. You can feel that the same minds from The Office worked on this show—the naturalistic characters, the sense of humor, and the aesthetic look. Though, The Paper cements itself as something entirely different. The only character that carries over from The Office is Oscar and I think they pull off his storyline well. And if you care about journalism or writing in any way, shape, or form, you’ll love this. 

I devoured it over the course of two days. It ended far too quickly. So I rewatched it. And I’ll probably rewatch it again because I want to remember it. 

Maybe if I whine hard enough, NBCUniversal—most notably my former employer from my time at the Universal CityWalk Starbucks—will hear my cries and release season two of The Paper weekly. A girl can dream.