‘The Paper’ revives the spirit of ‘The Office’ in a small-town newspaper

Twenty years ago, in 2005, the U.S. network NBC premiered The Office. The comedy that launched Steve Carell to stardom was a bold gamble. Its mockumentary style and its peculiar, uncomfortable humor were already present in the original The Office, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in 2001 for the BBC. Over time, that comedy — packed with gags and unforgettable characters capable of transcending space and time — became one of the most-watched series on streaming platforms year after year. Its spirit, and something more, is now present in The Paper.

“It’s actually been a long time coming,” says Greg Daniels, writer and producer of both The Office and The Paper. “The Office got very big on Netflix, and they started asking for something related to it. The cast of the original show never wanted to all get back together and do more episodes, so I felt the only option was a brand-new show,” he explained in a video call interview in mid-October. The idea was to keep the original format and, within the show, explain that the same documentary crew that filmed day-to-day life at the Dunder Mifflin paper company would now follow the work of a local newspaper in Toledo, a small city in Ohio.

Alongside Daniels, The Paper also has comedian, writer, and producer Michael Koman as co-creator, a veteran of the Saturday Night Live writers’ room. “I really respected his work on Nathan for You and How to with John Wilson — he’s someone who has experimented a lot with the documentary form for comedy. And one of our goals was to be very strict about it being a documentary. We’ve been working on this project for quite a while, but unfortunately the subject of local journalism’s decline in the United States has become more relevant by the minute,” says Daniels.

The show’s opening credits offer a clue as to why they focused on local journalism — and specifically, on local print newspapers. The title sequence shows newspapers being used for everything except reading: wrapping sandwiches, making a hat, covering windows, padding dishes, picking up pet waste…

“In the U.S., there are whole areas where we don’t have any journalists covering what’s going on at the local government,” Daniels says.

Koman, from another window on the video call, agrees: “A lot of the local newspapers around the country have been purchased by single companies that are located far away. The staff is reduced, and they all run the same stories, which come from a national wire service.”

In the face of this crisis in journalism, the protagonist of The Paper is an irrepressible optimist — a romantic who wants to revive the local newspaper. With no budget to hire experienced reporters, he turns to the company’s own staff — office workers, accountants, and so on — to serve as journalists. Among them is Oscar Martinez, played by Oscar Nuñez, the only character and actor who appears in both The Paper and The Office.

“By the end of The Office, Oscar hadn’t changed that much. I’m friends with him, and I worked with him on another show in between, and it just felt like if there was one connective character that could explain how the documentary crew stumbled into this new setting, that Oscar would be a terrific one to use," says Daniels.

Does the popularity of The Office hurt the new series, or does it work in its favor? “Maybe both,” Daniels reflects. “The Office has a lot of very dedicated fans who don’t want to necessarily give up their fanship to a new project. It was the case when fans of the British show saw the American show, and it was the case when fans of the American show saw Parks and Recreation [a comedy cocreated by Daniels that was originally developed as a spin-off of The Office], they were wary. But I think this is the kind of show that they would like."

“I had not worked on The Office‚” Koman adds, “and what I was excited about was the idea that you’re not necessarily trying to make The Office at all. This is the same documentary crew, and in the same way as a real documentarian, when they find a new project, they’re not looking to repeat themselves — they’re looking for something fresh."

Both acknowledge feeling the pressure of handling the successor to The Office, but each dealt with that pressure differently.

“The Office was such a wonderful format. In adapting it, I had the great benefit of attracting a lot of very talented people. I was able to put together a wonderful writing staff and cast,” says Daniels. “ But everybody who was involved felt the pressure of having people who loved the British show looking at us. Having gone through that before, I wasn’t as scared.”

“Honestly,” adds Koman, “I shut off the part of my brain that was even conscious of this wave of scrutiny, because it’s inevitable. You have to put your head down and make the best show you can.”

Beyond the small (or big) dramas of journalism — like the struggle to find interesting stories or the competition with local bloggers — the essence of The Paper remains the same as The Office: its characters. Alongside the newly arrived editor-in-chief (played by Domhnall Gleeson) are figures like the over-the-top Esmeralda Grand (portrayed by Sabrina Impacciatore), second-in-command at the newsroom and a staunch defender of clickbait headlines, and the jaded Mare Pritti (Chelsea Frei), the only journalist on the team with actual experience.

Soon, certain relationships between them begin to develop — and they move at a much faster pace than Jim and Pam’s, whose slow burn kept The Office viewers hooked for several seasons. Does today’s audience have less patience? “It’s so funny you say that because we recently edited the episodes down by another eight minutes to go on to NBC. So there’s an even faster-paced version of everything,” Daniels laughs.

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