It is an iron rule of TV that for every Frasier or Laverne & Shirley, spin-offs that became beloved in their own right, there will be any number of abortive attempts to stretch a premise beyond its breaking point. Joey, AfterMASH, The Tortellis, That ’80s Show, Sanford Arms, The Golden Palace, Joanie Loves Chachi. The list goes on, and proves inauspicious reading for Greg Daniels and Michael Koman, who this week expand The Office (US)’s universe beyond Dunder Mifflin, to Toledo and the newspaper business, with The Paper.
When Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson) arrives at the Toledo Truth Teller to become its new editor-in-chief, he is accompanied by a documentary crew. They will be capturing a snapshot of life at the headquarters of paper products company Enervate. “Office supplies, janitorial paper, toilet tissue, toilet seat protectors, and local newspapers,” the company’s head of strategy, Ken (Tim Key), tells viewers. “And that is in order of quality.” And so it seems, when Ned first encounters the Truth Teller’s eccentric staff. Sure, there’s level-headed Mare (Chelsea Frei), with whom he strikes up an instant rapport, but there’s also depressive circulation manager Nicole (Ramona Young), irrepressible ad-man Detrick (Melvin Gregg), and fiery Italian managing editor Esmeralda (The White Lotus’s Sabrina Impacciatore), who feels she has been usurped by Ned’s arrival. Oh, and then there’s a self-contained, if rather snobbish, sudoku-loving accountant called Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez, reprising his role from The Office).
The newspaper industry is in terminal decline. Yet battered on both sides by negative winds – the contraction of the advertising market after the dotcom boom, and dwindling audiences in the digital age – it retains a certain allure. “Woodward and Woodward’s boss,” comes Mare’s wry comparison, as she heads out on assignment with Ned. “Ben Bradlee!” he adds, with wide-eyed enthusiasm. And so, it proves a perfect setting for a sitcom about people feeling the pressure of disappointment. Should Mare give up on her journalistic ambitions and become a hotel concierge? Is Esmeralda too old to understand the digital innovation she’s leading? Has Ned arrived in his dream job just as the dream is ending? These are the mortal considerations of people who might be wasting their lives in a dying sector.
That’s a strength to the backdrop, but it’s also a weakness. The setup necessitates the gradual amelioration of the Truth Teller’s dwindled standards. Ned corrals his team of unlikely yet intrepid reporters, and, slowly, the newspaper’s output improves. When Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant created Wernham Hogg (the Slough-based paper company in the original Office), they created the ultimate corporate cipher. A company so boring that it could serve as a proxy for the mind-numbing work we’ve all experienced. The Paper is different. The nature of the work drives the plot, turning it into a media satire, where the setup is as important as the characters. “What is our Wordle?” Ken asks the team. “We need things that keep people’s mind off the news.”
Against this backdrop, any actor will struggle to cut a distinctive figure. Alex Edelman’s hapless Adam and Gbemisola Ikumelo’s salty Adelola fight to make an impression, while important B-plots, such as Nicole and Detrick’s fledgling attraction, feel distinctly undercooked. More successful is Tim Key going full David Brent, dialling the cringe factor up to suitably anxiety-inducing levels, and Impacciatore’s inevitably Emmy-winning performance as the lightly deranged Esmeralda, who steals every scene she’s in (and knows she’s doing it). She proves an important foil to Gleeson and Frei’s central pairing, who need some of the manic energy to play off. “Such a perfect level of bland,” she sighs at her new boss. “How do you do that?”
The Paper will inevitably be compared to The Office, and in largely unfavourable terms. But the question of whether it is good enough to survive on its own is moot. It doesn’t have to. Fans of The Office will give it a go, and over the course of a slow-burn first season, come to feel some affection for the denizens of the Truth Teller Tower. After all, the first season of The Office – after its migration to the US – was an imperfect thing, struggling to find its identity. It was given time and became one of the most successful sitcoms of the 21st century. Whether The Paper will be afforded that same grace – in the instant gratification media landscape it sends up – remains to be seen.
