DUBAI: It’s a bold move, returning to the world of one of the most beloved comedies in US TV history. But that’s what creators Greg Daniels and Michael Coman are doing with “The Paper.”
Set in the same fictional universe as the US version of “The Office” (for which Daniels was the showrunner) — itself an adaptation of Ricky Gervais’ and Stephen Merchant’s magnificent UK mockumentary series — “The Paper” finds the same documentary crew that covered the team at Dunder Mifflin searching for a new subject. They settle on The Toledo Truth Teller, a struggling local newspaper owned by Enervate — a company that treats it as an afterthought to its real business of selling toilet rolls and other paper-based household products. Coincidentally, one of Enervate’s accountants is Oscar Martinez (played by Oscar Nunez), formerly of Dunder Mifflin.
The Truth Teller has a new editor-in-chief, Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson) — a good-hearted, idealistic, privileged man with no experience, but whose father is a friend of Enervate’s CEO Marv Putnam. Ned is keen to shake things up at the tired old paper, which now relies solely on wire services for its print edition, put together by compositor Mare Pritti (Chelsea Frei), while its online platform, headed by the ambitious anti-Ned, Esmeralda Grand (Sabrina Impacciatore), churns out the kind of awful clickbait even the Mail Online might baulk at.
Ned wants to get back to the paper’s roots with community-focused originals. The problem? There’s no budget. He persuades Marv to let him recruit volunteer writers from throughout the company to give some of their work time over to the Truth Teller.
It’s a pretty good set-up, but despite a few glimmers of promise, “The Paper” is, at best, a serviceable piece of background television. Gleeson and Frei have good chemistry — Ned and Mare are basically the Jim and Pam of the show, complete with will-they-won’t-they plotline. But their grounded — and grounding — performances clash with the broader comedy of others, particularly Impacciatore’s portrayal of the flamboyant, entirely un-self-aware Esmeralda. The latter seems to belong in a laughter-tracked sitcom rather than a mockumentary.
It's watchable enough, and there’s definitely potential here. “The Office,” in the US, took a while to find its feet and Daniels should have enough credit banked to earn a second season. At the moment, though, “The Paper” falls well short of hopes and expectations.
