{"id":486,"date":"2025-09-05T09:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T09:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/486\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T09:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T09:27:07","slug":"domhnall-gleeson-pulls-off-deadpan-droll-in-us-office-offshoot-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/486\/","title":{"rendered":"Domhnall Gleeson pulls off deadpan droll in US Office offshoot \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irish actors are good at a lot of things \u2013 but few excel at comedy as effortlessly as Domhnall Gleeson<\/a>. He gave us the Peter Rabbit duology we didn\u2019t know we needed and was hilarious in the Disney<\/a> Star Wars<\/a> sequels, though perhaps not on purpose. Gleeson is every bit as deadpan as he affects a decent American accent for The Paper (Sky Max, 9pm), a sequel of sorts to the US version of toe-curling sitcom The Office that doubles as a lament for the demise of local newspapers in the US and \u2013 so it is implied \u2013 the hollowing out of the American soul. <\/p>\n

Gleeson is Ned Sampson, a can-do journalism graduate who has left a cushy job in sales to edit a once-great Ohio institution, The Toledo Truth Teller. The crucial word here is \u201conce\u201d. Black-and-white flashbacks hark back to the publication\u2019s glory days in the 1970s, when the printing presses roared and the newsroom was full of hard-bitten reporters. But 1970 was a long time ago: since the internet came along, the Truth Teller has become a \u201cghost paper\u201d, artificially fattened with wire copy but with little local news. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Domhnall Gleeson on nepo babies: \u2018I\u2019ve been so lucky. It\u2019s important you can acknowledge it. Otherwise you\u2019re lying to yourself\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The US Office was always kinder\/more sentimental than the venomous British edition, and Gleeson\u2019s Ned is nothing like Ricky Gervais\u2019s<\/a> one-person cringe carnival David Brent. He\u2019s closer to Steve Carell\u2019s<\/a> Michael Scott \u2013 well-meaning, a bit blundering and naive, but also a functional human being. In keeping with its predecessor \u2013 and unlike the original Office \u2013 The Paper is tart but never cruel. <\/p>\n

Still, it doesn\u2019t dance around the harsh truth that local journalism in the US has two feet in the grave and its head in the wood-chipper. Ned is determined to restore the Truth Teller to its glory days \u2013 his childhood hero, he explains, was Clark Kent, not Superman. But the task is impossible. The paper is on life support as an appendage to a far more successful purveyor of \u201cSoftees\u201d bathroom supplies. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s also got an enemy in the building in former Truth Teller \u201cmanaging editor\u201d Esmeralda Grand \u2013 played by Sabrina Impacciatore from the Sicily-set season of The White Lotus<\/a>. It\u2019s a laboured turn in a long tradition of Americans laughing at immigrants with \u201cfunny\u201d (to American ears) accents. As you watch, you can\u2019t help but think, \u201cthank goodness they didn\u2019t make her Irish.\u201d It would be a deal-breaker (as I\u2019m sure Esmeralda will be for Italian audiences). <\/p>\n

She is, in any case, upstaged in the villain stakes by Tim Key \u2013 aka Sidekick Simon from Alan Partridge \u2013 who is brilliantly Brent-ian as Ken, an executive who oversees the Truth Teller. Ken is the closest the show comes to the sheer, despairing nastiness of the UK Office \u2013 and it is no coincidence that he is by far the funniest character. <\/p>\n

Ned aside, the only staff member who resembles an actual person is earnest but cynical typesetter Mare (Chelsea Frei). The Paper is clearly setting up Ned and Mare as potential romantic interests, which means that Gleeson is both the punchline of The Paper \u2013 the poor sod actually believes journalism is worth fighting for \u2013 and its underdog hero. That mix doesn\u2019t quite work \u2013 should we pity Ned or cheer him on? Gleeson is nonetheless studiously deadpan and shares a mordant chemistry with Frei. Local news may be on its uppers, but thanks to a droll Dubliner, American cringe comedy is on the mend. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish actors are good at a lot of things \u2013 but few excel at comedy as effortlessly as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[818,93,61,60,819,820,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-domhnall-gleeson","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-ricky-gervais","13":"tag-steve-carell","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}