Don’t look now, but we’re already about two months into the new year. As far as the small screen goes, that’s usually when a few early show-of-the-year contenders start to announce themselves. At this time in 2025, we already had The Pitt, Severance, and Paradise in full swing. No disrespect to Ser Dunk and his escapades on HBO’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms—a show we love, by the way—but 2026’s TV calendar has been a little too quiet so far, especially when you factor in the roughly 87 new shows we see per week on any given streamer.
Thankfully, TV has not one but two saviors. Their names? Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe.
On Monday night, NBC debuted the first two episodes of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, a new half-hour mockumentary sitcom from TV creators Robert Carlock and Sam Means. Of course, ever since the heyday of The Office, Parks and Recreation, and the also Morgan-starring 30 Rock, NBC has searched for a mockumentary comedy that could fill even one Michael Scott–sized shoe. So I’ll give you a Michael Scott–worthy proclamation: Reggie Dinkins is not only the best new show of 2026 so far, but it has the best shot since The Good Place to contend with the holy trinity of NBC’s Aughts Comedy Hall of Fame.
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins follows its titular character (Morgan), who was a star running back for the New York Jets (the only logical team choice for a tragicomic antihero like Dinkins) until a gambling scandal ruined his career. Twenty-some years later, Dinkins hires a documentarian named Arthur Tobin (Radcliffe) to film a Last Dance–style portrait of his life and career. The only problem? Dinkins isn’t exactly a fan of the (mostly) impartial journalism we witnessed in the ESPN docuseries. In a Hail Mary attempt to resuscitate his public image, he’d rather record six episodes of hero worship—which makes for some long-overdue jabs at so many other modern athletes who’ve produced their own documentaries. (Love you, Tom Brady, but we didn’t need both Man in the Arena and Built in Birmingham: Brady & the Blues, whatever the heck that is.)
Typically, the best sitcoms feel so lived-in that even the larger ensemble acts as if it’s entering season 8 right off the bat. Reggie Dinkins is no exception. Bobby Moynihan’s Rusty Boyd—Dinkins’s former teammate turned middle-aged roommate—is exactly the sort of lovable-weirdo role I wanted to see the Saturday Night Live star take after departing the show in 2017. The rest of the cast is small but mighty: Erika Alexander, Precious Way, and Jalyn Hall shine whenever Reggie Dinkins lets them run with the ball. I don’t remember a sitcom cast announcing itself so loudly since the double arrival of Only Murders in the Building and Abbott Elementary in 2021.
While Chad Powers—the other great football comedy from recent memory—won laughs by reviving ’90s humor for a new crowd, Reggie Dinkins blends the best of core Office, Parks and Rec, and 30 Rock tenets into one brilliant game plan. The series revives the long-overdone mockumentary by actually making the documentarian a main character, actively reacting (and very often contributing) to the insanity playing out. On that end: It’s about damn time that someone recognized Radcliffe’s talents as a comedy performer enough to cast him in a show like this. (Watch Weird: The Al Yankovic Story if you haven’t yet.) And since this is a Tracy Morgan comedy, Reggie Dinkins smartly infuses the show with 30 Rock–esque flashbacks, right down to Reggie’s 20-year endorsement deal with a Scandinavian condiment company.
What’s so Parks and Rec about Reggie Dinkins? It’s the mushy center. If you squint hard enough at Reggie himself—who, yes, is an egomaniac who hoards memorabilia of himself in his basement—he’s an all-time athlete whose life was completely ruined by one mistake. You don’t have to look too hard for real-life parallels—just look at Super Bowl winner Sam Darnold, a former New York Jet who just completed his own redemption arc—to find that there’s still a real issue with how media and fans treat their fallen superstars.
For now, you can safely save the deeper thinking for later in the season. Just enjoy the duo of Morgan and Radcliffe, goofing off as if they were on SNL for a decade together. It’s magic.