A thought hit me when bingeing the first series of The Paper on Sky’s Now streaming service this week: how on earth did it take this long for someone to make a sequel to The Office?

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a glowing verdict on the comic merit of The Paper – an Office-style mockumentary set in a struggling regional newspaper in Toledo, Ohio. Rather it was a reflection on the usually mercenary economics of big television. During the pandemic, the American version of The Office racked up an astonishing 57 billion streaming minutes, despite its final episode having aired in 2013. The show premiered in 2005, inspired by the British sitcom created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant that ran from 2001 to 2003 (and which is itself still a big hit on iPlayer). The US series went on to run for 187 more episodes than its UK predecessor, yet it hadn’t been tapped for a proper spin-off – until now.

It wasn’t like there wasn’t money on the table. In 2021, the American streaming service Peacock paid $500 million just to secure the US exclusive streaming rights to the US Office and take it away from Netflix. Last year another US media company, the podcasting giant Audacy, paid an undisclosed sum – likely in the tens of millions – to become the new home of Office Ladies: a companion podcast in which two of the actors watch each episode of the........

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