This spin-off from the US Office is so brilliant that it might even eclipse its mother show. And as for the hilarious Sabrina Impacciatore – just hand her all the awards!
P
ity the poor TV writer foolish enough to make a show about journalism. The world is full of inaccurate and illogical medical dramas, but they survive because real life doctors and nurses only tend to grumble about them to themselves. But when you make an inaccurate and illogical show about journalists, real life journalists get to yell about it from the streets. This is probably why Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom ended so early, because we all got to bleat about it through our little megaphones.
The makers of The Paper must have been anticipating a similarly rough ride. It is, after all, explicitly a sitcom about the death of print media, and, Lord knows, nothing wounds us like staring the truth in the face. And yet last year’s first season emerged as one of the best new comedies on television.
Technically, a spin-off from the American version of The Office, it centred around the reporters of the dwindling Toledo Truth Teller newspaper. Forced to share an office with a (much more successful) toilet paper company, its skeleton staff were made to either copy and paste wire stories on to its content management system, or write clickbait drivel. It was bleak but, you had to admit, at least it knew the state of things.
