‘The Paper’: Nostalgia makes front page

To attempt a spin-off of the sacrosanct ‘The Office’ — in today’s flood of unnecessary remakes — is audacious, to say the least. Somewhere in the world, someone is on their millionth rewatch of Michael Scott yelling: “That’s what she said.”

That’s a tall order for ‘The Paper’. Set in Toledo, Ohio, its premise — a mockumentary where Dunder Mifflin of ‘The Office’ is bought out by paper conglomerate Enervate — starts at a familiar place, yet stakes its own claim.

Luring diehard fans away from a sitcom experience that needs no addition — and expecting them to chuckle again with a new set of eccentrics — is the television equivalent of attempting to rebrand water.

Miraculously though, the series manages to fix something that isn’t broken. Its genius: measured nostalgia. The writers don’t imitate; they wink, revisiting a filming style that honours ‘The Office’ while carving a distinct path.

The series begins with Enervate bigwig Ken Davies (Tim Key) ranking the firm’s products in order of cultural importance — office supplies at the top, janitorial paper (toilet paper and seat covers) second, and, scraping the bottom of relevance, their newspaper, the Toledo Truth Teller.

Somewhere, an actual editor just folded this review into a paper plane out of spite.

The storyline follows Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson), the nepotism-hired editor-in-chief, as he steps in with wide-eyed idealism, determined to revive the Teller.

While a cleaner segue might have been suggested in every screenwriting class, ‘The Paper’ is true to its lineage: long-winded and often mundane, until it isn’t.

On that note, however, the show sometimes trips. ‘The Office’ thrived because the comedy met you in an off-hand remark or awkward glance in a sterile room. ‘The Paper’ often forgets this subtlety. The new characters sometimes seem so bizarre they’d feel more at home in a Tina Fey fever dream. Couple this with creator Greg Daniels’ marquee deadpan humour, and the result is a push-pull between too weird and too ordinary that works most of the time, but occasionally misfires.

Still, it grips remarkably well — dodging the Hollywood curse of a limp first season.

A particular scene-stealer, managing editor of the paper’s online edition, Esmeralda Grand (‘White Lotus’ alum Sabrina Impacciatore), delivers lines with effortless flair. Her only media experience? Being on reality TV — and she leans into it, delivering malapropisms destined for T-shirts and tote bags: asking her new editor-in-chief not to be “self-defecating”, for instance.

Unlike Mindy Kaling’s Kelly Kapoor in the predecessor, Esmeralda, despite her brilliance, risks collapsing into the tired “morally grey exotic woman” trope. She begins magnetic, but her chaos can quickly overwhelm.

The show manages to dabble in moral commentary without cringey preachiness. Compositor Mare Pritti (Chelsea Frei) sullenly pulls stories off the AP wire just to fill space on the front page. A piece about Elizabeth Olsen’s nighttime skincare routine? A perfect nod to today’s infotainment underbelly.

That’s all she has left to print, and you realise the bleakest joke isn’t the writing — it’s the state of actual journalism.

For all its endearingly rough edges, ‘The Paper’ holds promise: a light watch that might yet headline its own reputation.

Provided it doesn’t try to be too many things at once, this extra edition could stand comfortably alongside its predecessor — without ever needing to scream, “That’s what she said.”