Expectations were low when the American version of “The Office” first aired in the US in 2005, said Tim Glanfield in The Times. But despite initially unfavourable comparisons to the British original, it “developed across nine years into a television behemoth”. Now we have a spinoff that uses the same mockumentary format to explore the inner workings of a local newspaper in the Midwest.
The Toledo Truth Teller once employed more than 1,000 people, but “now finds itself situated in the corner of one floor of its former grand Ohio offices alongside a toilet-roll brand”. Its output consists largely of clickbait and wire copy; its managing editor (Sabrina Impacciatore) presides over a tiny, dysfunctional staff; and its future seems uncertain. Then, an idealistic new editor is hired (Domhnall Gleeson) with aspirations to bring the paper back to its former glory, though he has never worked for a newspaper before. The show (on Sky), exudes confidence, and has just the right balance of silliness, satire and thoughtful characterisation.
“The Paper” has some of the pathos of “The Office”, said Hannah J. Davies in The Guardian, and it does “classic misdirection quite well”, but it is just not funny enough. If you’ve seen “The Office”, everything from the single-person interviews to the “warmth and the goofiness”, will feel “comfortingly and wearyingly familiar”, said Chris Bennion in The Telegraph. They’ve even transplanted a character, the accountant Oscar (Oscar Nuñez). Much like the show itself, it’s nice to see him, but you are not sure what he is doing there.
This spin-off of the American version of The Office is ‘comfortingly and wearyingly familiar’