The Paper TV Review: Does the spin-off series live up to The Office?

Plot: The documentary crew that immortalized Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch in the Emmy Award-winning series The Office finds a new subject when they discover a historic Midwestern newspaper and its publisher trying to revive it.

Review: The Office, the beloved NBC sitcom inspired by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s BBC series of the same name, has become a pop culture staple that signaled the shift from multi-camera comedies to single-camera and the faux documentary style employed by Modern Family and Parks and Recreation. In the twelve years since The Office aired its series finale, rumors of a reboot or spin-off have been rampant. Now, The Paper picks up the mantle of The Office with some familiar faces in an all-new setting with all-new characters. Led by Domhnall Gleeson, The Paper shares a similar sense of humor with the series that inspired it, but with a journalistic bend that allows for enough distinction between the shows to let this one stand on its own. The question that everyone is asking is whether The Paper is as good as The Office or if this series is a failed attempt to capitalize on the fame and recognition of the original show.

The series follows the struggling newspaper, the Toledo Truth-Teller. Owned by a megacorporation called EnerVate, the Toledo Truth-Teller is one of various subsidiaries, including Softees Toilet Paper, with whom they share office space. The newspaper has a limited print presence and a clickbait online site called TTT, run by Esmeralda Grant (Sabrina Impacciatore). EnerVate strategy officer Ken Davies (Tim Key) learns that CEO Marv Putman (Allan Havey) has hired former Softees salesman Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson), who wants to revitalize the Truth-Teller into a bastion of journalistic integrity. Ned enlists the limited staff of the Truth-Teller, including Mare Pritti (Chelsea Frei), Softees worker Travis (Eric Rahill), salesman Detrick Moore (Melvin Gregg), receptionist Nicole Lee (Ramona Young), and accountants Adelola Olofin (Gbemisola Ikumelo) and Adam Cooper (Alex Edelman) as volunteer reporters to get the paper back up and running. Ned also receives the reluctant inclusion of head accountant Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez), a former employee of Dunder-Mifflin. With Ned getting the new boss role, Esmerelda feels shunted aside and plots ways to take Ned down.

The Paper, like The Office and Parks and Recreation, is a bit uneven in its first season as it tries to differentiate itself from the series that inspired it. With all ten episodes dropping at once, fans of The Office will quickly get the opportunity to binge The Paper and find out whether it works for them, but I found myself enjoying some episodes more than others. The structure of having a documentary crew following the workers in an office setting, intercut with confessional interviews, remains intact. Still, the crew’s presence is more pronounced, with the characters regularly acknowledging that they are a part of a film project, and on-screen cards presenting responses or context by the filmmakers. The series also has candid conversations with the various newspaper staff members as they encounter obstacles in trying to find news stories for that day’s paper. That is where the similarities in the structure begin to differ, as The Paper focuses on a day of finding stories as the staff tries to get the edition to print. The episodes are each self-contained chapter that progresses through a loose season-continuity that shows character development and shenanigans. Still, it is kept loose enough that each episode can be enjoyed as a standalone part of a chronological viewing.

Domhnall Gleeson serves as an intriguing lead. He is not clueless like Michael Scott, nor is he hopelessly idealistic like Leslie Knope, but he bridges the two as a well-intentioned guy from a wealthy background who wants to succeed on his own merits despite being a little oblivious to all of the advantages he has been given. Gleeson is not afraid to dig into the broader comedy elements in The Paper, but is buoyed by a chemistry with co-star Chelsea Frei. Frei plays Mare, the most normal character in the series, who gets to take over John Krasinski’s mantle of mugging for the documentarians. There is a will-they, won’t-they dynamic between Ned and Mare that works well with the other similar pairing of Detrick and Nicole, whose relationship is handled very differently. Sabrina Impacciatore, best known Stateside for her role in season two of The White Lotus, becomes the closest thing The Paper has to an antagonist as Esmerelda and Ken Davies try to foil Ned’s ambitious goals. Impacciatore is funny and, like Rainn Wilson’s Dwight, gets humanized as the season progresses. Oscar Nunez digs into his character from the original NBC series in unique ways, which I won’t spoil here. Supporting players Alex Edelman, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Mo Welch, and Eric Rahill get less screen time than the rest of the cast, but have sparks of potential to break out, much like Daryl, Kelly, Kevin, or Angela on The Office.

Series creators Greg Daniels and Michael Koman wrote the first two episodes of The Paper, with the other episodes scripted by The Office‘s former showrunner Paul Lieberstein and cast members Alex Edelman, Mo Welch, and Eric Rahill, amongst others. Directing duties were handled by Daniels and Lieberstein as well as The Office helmers Ken Kwapis, Jennifer Celotta, Dave Rogers, and Jeffrey Blitz, along with newcomers Yana Gorskaya (What We Do In The Shadows), Jason Woliner (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), and Tazbah Chavez (Reservation Dogs). There are a lot of jokes that work and several that do not, but that is usually how series like this tend to go. Not quite as kooky as Parks and Recreation, The Paper benefits from digging into a different style of workplace with an emphasis on the pursuit of news stories in a town that is not as dynamic as New York or Chicago, a challenge in a day and age when online media has supplanted physical newspapers. By airing on Peacock, the series gets to play more with profanity, but some scenes are still bleeped, while others are not. This could have been due to the screeners I was sent, but it seems like an odd choice when one f-bomb is audible and another is not.

While series like St. Denis Medical have tried to replicate what made The Office work so well, others like Abbott Elementary have kept some aspects of the formula while forging their own path. The Paper is a natural continuation of The Office and even boasts an opening credit sequence inspired by Jay Ferguson’s memorable theme song. I liked The Paper enough to keep watching. I enjoyed the stronger episodes, including the solid season finale, which gives me hope that with the second season just announced, the series can become a worthy successor to The Office. The ensemble is all good, and the characters’ chemistry has potential, even if some moments feel too derivative of its Dunder-Mifflin-centric predecessor. But even when The Paper feels derivative of The Office, the stellar cast makes up for it. Sabrina Impacciatore and Tim Key are hilarious enough to warrant checking out The Paper, but stay for the strong talents of the entire ensemble.

The Paper drops all ten episodes of its first season on September 4th on Peacock.