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Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Ali Plumb and Hayley Campbell join Sarah-Jane Mee to review The Paper.

The Paper is a mockumentary sitcom spin-off of The Office, set in the newsroom of a struggling Ohio newspaper. New editor Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson) leads the Toledo Truth-Teller team through budget cuts, outdated traditions, and the temptations of clickbait.

What do the Must-Watch reviewers make of it all?

Ali: “I liked this show, I’m saying that up top, but it has a long journey to the top of the mountain to get anywhere near as good as either the UK Office or the US Office and I love them for not calling it The Office: Newspaper Story, because it lives in the shadow of two massive successes and I don’t want to play that game or have that conversation really about which is better UK or US when it comes to The Office, because I think it’s horses for courses and sometimes you’re in the mood for one and then the other.

“But this is very much within the universe of the US Office.

"There’s a tiny connection: Oscar, the character who you might remember as one of the accountants, he is in this show and otherwise it’s the Dòmhnall Gleeson show and if you’re wondering, ‘hang on, I didn’t know he was a comedian,’ I think that’s fair.

“When you compare this show for example to the US Office or to Parks and Rec which I think is the best comparison point, you have Amy Poehler, a massive Saturday Night Live superstar, particularly in the US when it comes to comedy.

“I love Dòmhnall Gleeson, I would like to pretend he is my brother from another mother, we do share some genes…”

Sarah-Jane: “He’s in one of my favourite films, About Time…"

Ali: “Yeah, if you fancy a cry, Bill Nighy and him…”

Sarah-Jane: “So good, that film!”

Ali: “Everybody, Ben Folds, the music’s in my head.”

Ali: “Dòmhnall Gleeson does his best, actually I think he does a very good job, but the character itself is an optimistic, awkward, naïve guy that is just in love with the concept of journalism, but butting his head against the fact that advertisers aren’t there and the local community don’t really want to engage with what this is and his bosses would actually really rather be selling their other product…which is toilet roll.

“So, it really is tough for Dòmhnall to be the comedic superstar that I think he wants to be, and the shadow is so long from these other shows.

“I really feel like the comparisons are not to its favour.

"Time and again you go, ‘okay, there’s the happy couple that are going to do the will-they-won’t-they thing, there’s the lazy dude, there’s the nutty, slightly eccentric, if not very eccentric, generally massive people.’

“It all feels tab-A-into-tab-B, you can tell what the template is, if not the full formula and yet I do feel there’s enough charm there that I want to give this another series and I’m glad it’s already been commissioned for another one, because I think it has potential.

“I want to remind people who are also sit-com nutter addicts like myself, I know that The Dwarf was rubbish for the first series, Seinfeld was hard work the first time out the gate…”

Hayley: “Parks and Rec is famously bad in the first.

“People say watch it, but know it’s painful, it gets better in the second one.”

Ali: “I think this has potential, give it time and if you are in to your core UK Office, then this won’t be for you.”

Hayley: “Yeah…”

Ali: “But if you like a sit-com and if you miss those halcyon days of the mid noughts, where it was just twenty-two episodes, there’s enough of something here, there’s enough charm here and there, if you can get over the wacky-colleagues sickness that does occasionally become a little too present.”

Hayley: “I agree with all that and I would also add, if you have worked for a failing news organisation, this might be a triggering watch, because Gleeson does have this romantic idea of what a journalist is like.

"He’s got this Woodward and Bernstein dream, even though it’s a local newspaper in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

"And then he finds that it’s this badly lit office full of depressed people who are just copying things over from the Wire news source and hoping it fits the page layout.

“It's depressing, because it’s true.

“As Ali says, I think this show is fine, it’s just not all that funny, maybe, yet…”

Ali: “Yet…”

Sarah-Jane: “It’s warming up, is the hope.”

Hayley: “I want to be optimistic as well…”

Ali: “Me too and I want this sort of sit-com to exist, I love Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

“I love a twenty-two episode, twenty-two minute show like this, but it’s a bit too shiny, too nice I think."

Hayley: “That’s true and I would also say, shows like that, like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, they might start off awkward and then they get good in the middle and then they get schmaltzy and bad towards the end.

“I think that happened with the American Office too I think…”

Ali: “Yeah, once people are left it gets off…”

Hayley: “This does feel like a joke that was told twenty years ago, because it was, and the US Office was a great show, but I think only after it morphed into its own thing after it ran out of UK Office to copy.

"I think if you are a fan of that, you might find this is a little weak and dated to you.

"It feels a bit weak and dated to me.

“It still feels a bit like the thing I like, but the off-brand version that’s a little watered down.”

Ali: “Yeah, it’s come through the fax machine and it’s got the information there and I like that information, but yeah there are a few lines, printing errors along the way.”

Hayley: “I think Tim Key is funny, but Tim Key can just stand there and be funny.”

Ali: “I have a thought on Tim Key.

"So Tim Key plays the boss, or one of the bosses, in charge of this company that actually just wants to be selling loo roll.

"He is doing a Ricky Gervais impression, and he won’t mind me saying this I hope, but it is like he’s in a different show to everybody else…”

Hayley: “Maybe that’s why I liked him…”

Ali: “Maybe…”

Ali: “But one last thought on the shininess and how pretty it is: the UK Office and the US Office I liked as much as I did in part, because they were real people doing real things and I could tell they went home and they watched the telly, put microwave meals in the microwave, whereas this is too well-lit.

"If you see anyone in any sort of journalistic output, it is hunched back, one flickering light, the coffee machine barely works and this is…”

Hayley: “Describing my life…”

Ali: “I feel seen!

“This is sadly just a little too smart, it looks a little too good, people are a bit too well made up and I think that loses some of the humour, I think you need it to be a bit gritty under the fingers.”

Sarah-Jane: “Yeah, and try to recreate the success of Parks and Rec and The Office US. They’ve obviously given it a bit of a bigger budget…”

Ali: “Bit more polished than it should be.”

Sarah-Jane: “Yeah, it’s a bit more polished.

"So the big question is, is it a must watch, Ali?”

Ali: “Not yet.”

Sarah-Jane: “Not yet…”

Hayley: “Yeah, I agree, not yet.”

Ali: “This is not a negative review, I’ve said a lot of negative stuff, which feels unfair, but I’m optimistic and excited for the future.”

“I sound like I’m reading a press release.”

Hayley: “We just know we’ve been here before.”

“We’ve been around long enough to know that shows get better.”

Sarah-Jane: “And as you said, series two has already been confirmed, so maybe we should just stick a date in the diary to review the start of series two.”

All episodes of The Paper are available to watch on NOW and two episodes will air every Friday from 9pm on Sky Max. In the US it airs on Peacock and in Australia it airs on Binge.

This week, the team reviewed Honeymoon Island and Omerta.

But before all that, why not contact the must watch reviewers with the shows you’ve been loving, loathing or both on mustwatch@bbc.co.uk.