Even though the Prime Video sci-fi adventure series “Paper Girls” is set in the Cleveland area, filming took place entirely in Illinois, from the Southport Corridor to Willow Springs, from Joliet to Prospect Heights, not to mention Thornton and Wheeling and Glenwood. It’s a handsomely mounted production, and there’s promise in the comic book-based story about four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls who get caught up in a time-traveling war, but over the course of eight episodes in Season One, the action often slows to a crawl and certain themes and cultural commentaries are hammered home again and again.
If there is a Season Two—and the cliffhanger ending certainly indicates that’s the hope and intention—“Paper Girls” has the potential to develop into a kind of less nostalgic “Stranger Things,” what with the 1980s time period in which the show kicks off and the band of kids who must perform heroic deeds to save the day. But they’re going to have to kick things into a faster and more compelling gear to convince us this is a story worth a long run.
