The Paper review – this spinoff of the US Office is dated, mediocre TV

Domhnall Gleeson stars as a clueless local newspaper editor in the mockumentary comedy’s latest creation. His talents can’t outdo the one-note dialogue and lack of hilarityTwo years after the British version concluded with a second brilliantly mortifying Christmas special in 2003, American viewers got their own take on The Office. Set at the Dunder Mifflin paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, it was very much in the spirit of the original, at least initially: a deadpan mockumentary centred on a megalomaniac manager (Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott), who like Ricky Gervais’s David Brent before him was “a friend first, and a boss second … and probably an entertainer third”. The Office: An American Workplace ran for nine seasons, setting aside some of the original’s cringe comedy aspects in favour of something with a little more heart. By the time it ended in 2013, it was an award-winning sitcom juggernaut in its own right – hugely popular but bearing little resemblance to its Slough-based sibling.It is in this US Office universe that showrunner Greg Daniels’s new spinoff is set, with the camera crew that followed Dunder Mifflin for a decade now decamping to a floundering local news outlet a state away (Oscar Nunez’s judgy accountant Oscar Martinez is the only character to transfer from Pennsylvania to Ohio). The Toledo Truth Teller is a newspaper struggling to survive in the digital age: cue the arrival of plucky new editor Ned Sampson (a very un-Irish Domhnall Gleeson). Ned hasn’t actually worked for a newspaper before, but he has risen the ranks selling high-end cardboard at the Truth Teller’s parent company, Enervate, which specialises in different types of paper (hence the link with Dunder Mifflin, and cue a recurring bit about the Truth Teller being less popular than toilet roll). Continue reading...

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