• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Today

Episode One of “The Paper” plays like a spot-on sentimental ode to newspapers, but by Episode Two, it devolves into a typical workplace comedy in which everyone is eccentric, and in this case, incompetent.

The TV Blog is well aware that workplace sitcoms on TV are not the same as real life. But at the same time, a little reality would be nice.

In “The Paper” -- coming to Peacock this week -- the employees of a fictional Toledo, Ohio newspaper in its death throes take the eccentricity and incompetence of workplace comedies to new heights.

So useless are they for making up a newspaper every day that it is like watching a group of first graders who just happen to be grown-ups.

The show revolves around an earnest young man named Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson, photo above) who comes to Toledo to save the city’s dying, fictional daily, The Toledo Truth Teller.

He finds only two staffers with any newspaper experience -- a reporter who has been at the paper since at least 1971, but who basically sleeps all day, and a young woman who worked at Stars and Stripes while serving in the Army.

The rest of the “staff” -- if you can call them that -- consists mainly of volunteers from the toilet-paper division of the fictional paper company that owns The Truth Teller.

Paper -- whether news or toilet -- links “The Paper” to “The Office,” which was also about a paper company, only it was office paper, not bathroom tissue.

Greg Daniels, showrunner on “The Office,” created “The Paper” and serves as executive producer. Both shows are one-camera “mockumentaries.” 

The shows are so alike that Ricky Gervais and his producing partner Stephen Merchant, creators of the original U.K. version of “The Office,” get executive producer credits on “The Paper” and therefore stand to make money from it.

But wait, there’s more. One character from the Scranton office of Dunder-Mifflin -- accountant Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez) -- takes up the same job at the Toledo newspaper.

Mild-mannered, well-meaning Ned -- the newly installed editor-in-chief of The Truth Teller -- is this show’s Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) from “The Office.” 

Other characters in “The Paper” also compare closely to some of the “Office” characters, but there is no Michael Scott (the “Office” boss played by Steve Carell).

One character who seems to have no counterpart from “The Office” is the failing paper’s managing editor and its nominal boss until Ned Sampson comes to town.

Thus, the now-former boss of The Truth Teller seeks to undercut her new boss at every opportunity.

Named Esmeralda (played by Italian actress Sabrina Impacciatore), the very existence of this character makes no sense.

She is a two-dimensional stereotype of the “over-emotional” Italian woman intent on revenge.

Moreover, her role as managing editor of a newspaper -- even a fictional one as woeful as The Truth Teller -- cannot be explained. 

Where did she come from? How did she end up in Toledo? What kind of nut would hire her to run a newspaper? The character is so unlikable that her scenes threaten to derail the entire show.

Affection for old-fashioned print media is front and center in Episode One of “The Paper,” but workplace hijinks completely take over the show in Episode Two.

By the end of Episode Two, it becomes reasonable to conclude that no matter how much Ned Sampson dreams of breathing new life into a newspaper on life-support, it just isn’t going to happen -- just like in the real world.

“The Paper” starts streaming on Thursday, September 4, on Peacock.