It's a line so often repeated it's become a cliche: You couldn't make The Office today.
The argument goes that its humour is too inappropriate – full of sexist, racist and otherwise outdated jokes that society would no longer accept in today’s cultural climate.
This, of course, is a shallow misread of what makes The Office – one of the most enduringly popular sitcoms of the modern era – so funny, even now. We're not laughing at the bigotry – we're laughing at the relatable feeling of being stuck in a working environment full of people with regressive and misguided perspectives.
But as hilarious as it remains, Greg Daniels – who created the long-running American version of the show – didn't reach for similar jokes for The Paper, his new Office spin-off, how showing on OSN+ in the Mena region. Why?
“Because, simply, there are other ways to be funny,” Daniels tells The National.
It's not to stay in step with the times – it's to honour the grand tradition of workplace comedy, from The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Cheers to Spin City.
“There were always funny shows other than The Office and All in the Family in the history of television,” says Daniels. “But those are the ones that relied on characters saying offensive things and everyone getting on their case about it.”
That strategy seems to be working as the show has already been renewed for season two, as per Variety.
Breaking down The Paper's comedic sensibility
The Paper shares a lot with The Office. Its first episode begins back in the location of the original series, with the documentary crew trying to figure out what happened to their company Dunder Mifflin.
They got bought, it turns out, by a larger paper company – one with many paper-related divisions, from toilet to news. The story follows an idealist hired as editor-in-chief (Domhnall Gleeson) for the company's newspaper, only to find that they do nothing but copy-paste and clickbait. So, to get the paper back to its former glory, he tasks the unsuspecting office workers with becoming journalists for the first time in their careers.
“With The Paper, we're intentionally not repeating the comedy engine of The Office. The workers are being tasked with intellectual moves they're not trained for – that's where the comedy comes from.”
And while, like in any office, there are outmoded sensibilities among the workers, they intentionally avoided giving them bigoted perspectives. Co-creator Michael Koman insists writing that punches down is just “lazy”.
“I don't find it to be that complicated,” he says. “I think that you can examine your own impulses in a commonsense way and look at what you've written and where you know a joke is coming from.
“If a joke might be the expense of somebody that doesn't deserve it, that's not well written, and you can reassess. So in a way, I think just hopefully, writing has become less lazy.”
Overcoming the growing pains of character comedy
The key sensibility the two shows share is something Daniels has championed his entire career, from The Simpsons to Parks and Parks and Recreation to King of the Hill: character comedy, or “jokes that come out of human personality,” says Daniels.
Koman explains: “You write a script with the best jokes that you can put in the best storyline. But I think it takes everyone a little time to figure out how the characters are funny beyond just the writing. There's a little bit of behaviour and things that you observe that factor into it with time.”
Not allowing his cast the space to explore the characters is a mistake that Daniels had made himself in the past, particularly with one of his other most consistently popular creations.
“We tried to improve on some of the problems that I had doing Parks and Recreation. For that, episode two was being shot while episode one hadn't even been edited. We didn't get a chance to look at stuff for a few episodes and make course corrections.”
Daniels continues: “It does take a while to get up to speed with that. And this time, we tried to accommodate it in production. We shot the pilot and then took a month off to edit the pilot, which is very rare.
“When we came back we did reshoots and we were constantly editing while shooting and making adjustments. And then at the end, we shot a big sequence for the pilot based on what we'd learnt.”
You can only do so much to avoid growing pains, however. “With The Paper, it still definitely gets funnier as the show progresses,” Daniels adds.
Why The Paper is an ode to good journalism
There's another key difference between The Office and its spin-off. While the original followed a dying industry that was failing to adapt to a digital age, Daniels and Koman didn't choose to follow a newspaper to mock the industry.
Instead, The Paper is a dissection of the ways that parts of the industry have already lost their way, and a call to action for those clickbait-focused news outlets to go back to their roots and serve the public good, as well as to inspire audiences to remember how important good journalism is to everyday lives.
“We're hoping people will feel really moved and want to be more supportive,” says Daniels. “We're trying to be optimistic this time around.”
The Paper season is streaming now on OSN+ in the Mena region
