Films and serials on the publishing business tend to take themselves too seriously. They are either about exposes or about the ethics of journalism. There is no effort to just gauge the madness of a newsroom without prejudice and with a lot of peppery self-deprecating humour.
The Paper, created by Greg Daniels and Michael Koman, follows the deadline-defying antics of staffers in a near-defunct, halfway-obsolete newspaper in Toledo, Ohio, barely able to breathe but not willing or able to close down.
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In principle, there is nothing here to laugh about. The situation is more grim than grin. But here’s the thing: the characters are willing to stand fully exposed in their failure and desperation without any shame. These are journalists who know their days are numbered.
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So are ours. Ten episodes breeze by naughtily, bringing into our lives a sense of surrogate satisfaction: thank God it’s not us in that ramshackle publication house… Thankfully we are privy to their behaviour with not a breath of boredom.
As we all know, there is something or the other always happening in a newspaper office. Someone comes up with a dead-end scoop, or a scoop that seems to reach dead-end when it suddenly swerves and acquires a new life. These moment-to-moment changes are recorded in the remarkably written script (Greg Daniels and Michael Koman). The upper-floor drama is constantly defined by what lies underneath, with the result that we are never watching just one plot unfold.
Come to think of it, the background happenings are even more interesting than what lies on the surface.
The series begins with the appointment of a new editor Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson) to the paper. His “grand entry” is a bit of a damper, as he is denied access into the office. From here on onwards the sassy skylarking seldom ceases.
Most of the indescribably hilarious situations are better experienced rather than narrated: they have a very “live” quality to them, and not only because the entire series is shot as “mockumentary”. A crew is supposedly filming the chaotic bustling activities in the newspaper office. But honestly, no camera, live or functional, can capture the sheer zaniness of these mediapersons who are in the profession not for the love of it, but just for the heck of it.
The performances lift the proceedings into a precinct beyond the parodic. Every mediaperson is recognizably real. But the one who really makes The Paper special is Sabrina Impacciatore as Esmeralda Grand, the Managing Editor of the paper. What a performance! With her grandiloquence, self-importance and theatrical demeanour, her character borders on the burlesque. But that’s where the series scores: it goes to the shrillest note and yet remains an opera of life.
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