This Doesn't Bode Well for 'The Office' Spin-Off, 'The Paper'

The first trailer for The Office spin-off, The Paper, did not look particularly good. But I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt anyway. It’s from Greg Daniels, the originator of The Office! And King of the Hill!

But also, Space Force, one of the biggest wastes of comedic talent ever put on a streaming platform (turns out it is possible to make a very bad comedy with Steve Carell, John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Lisa Kudrow, Jessica St. Clair, Diedrich Bader, and Jimmy O. Yang).

I’m starting to feel like maybe The Paper—starring Domhnall Gleeson, Tracy Letts, Ramona Young, and Alex Edelman—could suffer the same fate. That’s because Peacock announced today that The Paper will drop all ten episodes at once instead of sticking with its original weekly release plan.

In other words, Peacock doesn’t seem to have faith that it will build an audience over a couple of months. Instead, the streamer wants to rack up as many views as possible in 72 hours and quickly (I assume) put all the bad press behind them before the NFL season, rather than using Sunday Night Football to promote The Paper throughout its run. This feels like a bad omen since, as far as I can tell, Peacock only has one other series scheduled for the rest of the year: Sarah Snook’s mystery All Her Fault, in November.

All episodes of The Paper drop on September 4.