Almost exactly three years after the comic series came to its conclusion, Paper Girls takes to Amazon Prime for a triumphant first season in which its four pre-teen protagonists are sucked into a time-travel mystery.
The opening scenes of the first episode of Paper Girls are akin to those within the first comic: newly minted papergirl Erin Tieng (Riley Lai Nelet) wakes up, trying not to disturb her disgruntled younger sister, and begins the arduous process of unpacking a stack of newspapers and slipping a rubber band around each one. The blaring alarm clock reads 4:26AM, in a red as angry as an average twelve-year-old being forced to wake up at such a time.
Erin, however, is not entirely an average twelve-year-old girl, balancing school and a new job assisting her non-English-speaking mother. She is noticeably lost at the start of her first paper round – her first real job, and one that, within her world, was only recently opened up to girls. The first of these female paperboys is Mac (Sofia Rosinsky), with her Walkman, ‘smokes’ and lack of tact, who Erin meets along with the sporty KJ (Fina Strazza) and smart Tiffany (Camryn Jones). The four of them couldn’t be more different upon first impressions, but as they get dragged unceremoniously into the future after finding a mysterious device in an empty house, they bond over a common denominator: they’re all confused, frightened preteens just trying to get home.
The story is strongly written and strongly led – it feels as though it knows where it is going, rather than being pulled along by its writers. There is always a clarity to what’s going on, with sci-fi technobabble mostly (and perhaps thankfully) absent in favour of a simple explanation: the paper girls are in the future; their loved ones are not. They need to return to them however possible. Rather than relishing in its own cleverness and depicting a slideshow of futuristic worlds and inventions, most of this first season takes place in 2019 and focuses on how the girls cope with their circumstances, and what they have to learn about themselves. There’s a lot to chew on, but never so much that the neat, approximately forty-minute runtime of each episode feels constricting.
There are some especially interesting questions brought up about how your old self might see your current one – or how your current self might talk to your future self. This is a concept that has been explored in film and television before but not with quite so much depth – in the likes of Avengers: Endgame or Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (2016), such situations are only really used as a plot device to move things forward. Paper Girls confronts the idea more boldly, however. A lot of time is devoted to the concept and viewers are forced to consider whether their past selves would be proud of or disappointed in their current selves, and whether this means they’ve failed in some way or simply that life takes unexpected turns unimaginable to the young. This gives the show a tangible impact within the real world; while still remaining entertaining, it’s a show that really makes viewers think and work for the conclusions they draw.
“Although the series strays from the comic’s storylines in several noticeable ways, its heart remains the same in that it is a female-led excursion about coming-of-age and coming into one’s own.”
The comics leant consistently on bright colours (the first ever issue’s cover was a shade akin to the bright ‘Flashlight yellow’ of a Nancy Drew book spine), and the show brings this aspect over from the source material too, looking beautiful throughout. Although the comics’ signature bright pink is used sparingly – mostly in key moments of danger, in which it lights up the sky – it is present when it counts. Care has been taken to make costumes as comic-accurate as possible, and where practicality leads to changes they are still character-accurate, though it would still be nice if more shots were direct parallels of the comic panels, akin to this year’s Heartstopper adaptation. An eclectic mix of songs old and new are scattered throughout the show, but they are well-selected and fitting for the moments they inhabit.
One criticism of the show is that a little too much authority and screen-time is given to adult, and often male, characters than in the comics, which were about the girls having to figure things out for themselves. In addition, frequent comparisons to Stranger Things leave a bad taste in one’s mouth – not all 80s-set series about kids on bikes are the same, and the first Paper Girls comic was published nine months before Stranger Things. So many stories have historically been male-centric, and it’s hard to call to mind another sci-fi series in which teenage girls take the reins so directly, so yet more comparisons to yet more teen-boy protagonists are tiring. Although the series strays from the comic’s storylines in several noticeable ways, its heart remains the same in that it is a female-led excursion about coming-of-age and coming into one’s own. This shouldn’t be compromised for the sake of comparison or adaptability.
Character-driven and as strong-headed as its protagonists, Paper Girls is the series to stream. Hopes are high for a second season, in which hopefully some dropped comic plotlines will be brought into play.
Paper Girls is available now on Amazon Prime Video.
Words by Casey Langton
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