Calling all fans of The Office, this is not a Dwight Schrute fire drill. Hot off the presses, The Paper has dropped on Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service.
Even before its binge release, the series was picked up for a second season. The renewal was announced Wednesday on NBC’s Today while series stars Domhnall Gleeson and Sabrina Impacciatore were promoting the new show.
The comedy was originally set to be rolled out over four weeks. But the streaming service, along with Universal Television and the show’s producers, decided to release the entire season all at once because of “positive responses from people who have previewed the series,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Peacock dropped the first official trailer last month of the spinoff mockumentary series set in the same universe as the beloved Dunder Mifflin-ites at the Scranton branch.
The premise of the new comedy involves the same documentary crew that has found a new paper-related subject “several years” later, as revealed in the trailer. They discover the historic yet struggling Ohio newspaper, the Toledo Truth Teller.
The trailer sets the tone for the lack of quality at the newspaper, as described by employee Ken (Tim Key): “Enervate sells products made of paper: Toilet tissue, toilet seat protectors and local newspapers — and that is in order of quality.” One of the cameras then catches garbage being scraped off a folded-up Truth Teller newspaper.
Cue Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson), the new hopeful editor in chief, who is brought in to try and revive the newsroom. He admits the paper “sucks” compared to other papers, but vows to make it better by shaking things up.
Viewers are also introduced to one of the paper’s writers, Esmeralda, played by Emmy-nominated The White Lotus actress Sabrina Impacciatore. She proudly shows the documentary crew one of her clickbait articles with the headline: “You Won’t Believe How Much Ben Affleck Tipped His Limo Driver.”
Sabrina Impacciatore as Esmeralda, Domhnall Gleeson as Ned in “The Paper.” (Peacock)
We also get a glimpse of an intro meeting where Ned asks a group of volunteer reporters if any of them have “actually written for a paper before.” The responses are less than impressive, though perhaps Dundie-worthy, sharing their experience writing junior high papers, Tweeting and group-texting.
But Ned isn’t one to back down from a challenge, as the trailer shows. “Seven highly motivated, tenacious Buckeyes are out there hunting for news,” Ned says, mirroring Michael Scott’s loyalty to his employees. “You’d be a fool to bet against that.”
I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.
When does ‘The Paper’ premier and how can I watch?
The Paper, co-created by Greg Daniels (The Office and Parks and Recreation) and Michael Koman (Nathan For You), launches exclusively on Peacock. The streaming service pivoted their release strategy to what will now be a binge drop, releasing all ten episodes at once on Thursday, Sept. 4. (It was previously announced that just four episodes would drop that day, followed by two new episodes every week.)
Who else will appear in the first season?
Rounding out the main cast ensemble for The Paper are Chelsea Frei, Melvin Gregg, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Alex Edelman and Ramona Young.
The end of the trailer also teases the return of Dunder Mifflin accounting pal, Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nuñez), who aggressively tells the crew: “Not again.” He then threatens to make the shots unusable by cursing.
Well, well, well, how the turn tables.
The ensemble cast of “The Paper.” (Peacock)