‘The Paper’ Season 2 review: Domhnall Gleeson and friends bring earnest charisma to the Toledo Truth Teller’s latest exploits

At the end of Season 1 of The Office spinoff, The Paper, the Toledo Truth Teller had won three awards and Ned (Domhnall Gleeson) the editor, and Mare (Chelsea Frei), the star reporter, had admitted their feelings for each other, though Ned was worried about the future.

The newspaper shares office space and volunteer journalists with Softees, a toilet paper brand, that sells much more than the Toledo Truth Teller. Season 2 opens with Ned hoping to ask the CEO, Marv (Allan Havey) for money to run the paper as it has won awards, something it has not done since the 1970s.

However, he is unable to do so as an employee of Softees dies and Marv wants the team to work on the obituary. When it turns out the employee was killed cooking meth, there is considerable cooling off and the wake is turned into a celebration of the awards.

Following the beats of a crisis being introduced and resolved in 25 minutes feels oddly reassuring in these uncertain times. While not hectically funny or heavy-duty serious, The Paper works because it is deeply invested in characters who feel like people we have all met in the course of our working lives. There are charming relationship dramas happening throughout the 10 episodes of The Paper.

We see Ned and Mare try to keep their relationship secret. Detrick (Melvin Gregg) the sales rep and Nicole (Ramona Young) from circulation move further away from each other. Their case is not helped by Lisa (Lisa Gilroy) from HR.

Travis (Eric Rahill) has a crisis of confidence when he feels he is not a real journalist, but Ned sees the quality of his photographs and hires him as a photojournalist. While covering a tornado with Adelola (Gbemisola Ikumelo) he discovers he has feelings for her.

Esmeralda Grand (Sabrina Impacciatore), the loud and flamboyant editor of TTT online, is up to her usual tricks, embarrassing her son and getting things gloriously wrong, including mistaking a halfway house for a haunted house.

A still from ‘The Paper’ Season 2
| Photo Credit:
Peacock

Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez), from Dunder Mifflin, is making tough deals for his award-winning Suduko puzzle while Barry (Duane Shepard Sr.) continues to drag himself out of senility to make the occasional sharp observation.

There is a charm about The Paper that allows it to sail by on good humour and vibes powered largely by Gleeson, who as a co-worker tells him looks like “someone drew David Bowie from memory.” There is something sweet about Ned pretending a rat bit him rather than admit to Mare, who was a war correspondent in the Army, that the recoil of the gun startled him.

The new billboard celebrating TTT’s victory at the awards, which results in cancelled subscriptions because people call the number on the billboard, is just the sort of mess the beleaguered paper would get into.

The episodes move quickly and we are invested enough in the relationships and career decisions of these harmless, delightful office folk to want to know what fresh trouble the good people of TTT will get into.

Hopefully, the third season will let us know, as Detrick wisely says, “I have a sixth sense about these things… not the Bruce Wills movie although I can tell when people are dead too.”

The Paper currently streams on JioHotstar