TL;DR – Cornerstoned by some fantastic performances, we explore a world where things might be perfect, as long as you don’t look any deeper.

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

Paradise Review –

It might just be the current climate, or the fact that rewatching The West Wing makes me feel a growing sense of naivety. But I have been trying to find a new political or politically adjacent series to stick my teeth into. My first attempt was the delightful The Residence, which made its mark. But I wanted to find something with a bit more bite, and today I think I found it.

So, to set the scene, Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) was doing his usual daily rounds in the sleepy town of Paradise. The sort of town where you can jog to the President’s house as part of your morning commute. Xavier did the usual handoff to the agents on site, including Jane Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom) and Billy Pace (Jon Beavers). However, something was off that morning, POTUS, Cal Bradford (James Marsden) was still in bed, which was odd even for a man who spends most of his day in a bathrobe. But as he goes into the President’s room, he is accosted by the sight of blood and the body of the President. Xavier should call it in right away, but he locks the site down before word can escape, and before he loses control of the first murder scene in Paradise’s history. Now, from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

 Watching that first episode, I liked how much I didn’t realise that something was very wrong with the setting before they revealed their hand. I had just assumed that this was an ex-president with its small detail, or this was the President’s home away from the White House. It was an entirely plausible set-up in my head right until it pulled the rug out from underneath me, something that would happen throughout the season. For example, it was a good thing I didn’t check who was on the main cast list because I would have been wondering why Jane made it and Billy didn’t, rather than having that fascinating reveal of who really is the monster in the town.     

I didn’t know we were walking into a Fallout situation, so that final reveal in the first episode absolutely captivated me to see how the rest of the season would go. Once you have a much too perfect town in the middle of a post-apocalyptic hellscape, you know you are about to delve into some dystopian undercurrents, and on that, the show didn’t disappoint. In many respects, the scenario they depict here feels like what if the movie 2012 took its premise a bit more seriously. Sure, the city is run by the billionaires who saw it coming and paid to make sure they were safe, but they are generally not depicted in the best light, and it feels like the power centres of the city are not even in their sphere.

What this scenario does is give space for several actors to let rip with their performances. I have really been impressed with James Marsden’s acting choices in the last few years, and here was no different. You feel he is the man thrust into a role he didn’t want to do at a time when the weight of human civilisation was thrust on his shoulders. Julianne Nicholson gets to chew every bit of scenery as the power behind the throne. If you watched that one scene in the last season of The Diplomat, now imagine getting to do that for a full season. Then we have the joy that was Sterling K. Brown. Look, I knew Sterling K. Brown was a great actor before now, but goodness, what a performance he brought to this show. That mix of determination tinged with the horrors of trauma, supplanted so that he can still be a father.

Much like many other murder mysteries in this space, we get the general story arc throughout the season, while also jumping back in time to key moments on the day the President was murdered, and back further. These shifts helped keep the momentum flowing as each new part of the puzzle fell into place. It also led to one of the strongest penultimate episodes of television I have watched in a while, The Day. The terror, the betrayal, the coming calamity, all of it was building to that point. We had Xavier desperately trying to get his wife to safety, President Bradford walking the line between his own safety and letting people know this is the end, and the horror of betrayal from everyone else in the White House when they realised they were not being saved. It was incredibly emotional watching it all unfurl, and it was probably one of the best hours of television I have watched all year.

Unfortunately for the show, however, once you strip away the post-apocalyptic setting and the dystopian vibes, you get to the heart of everything, and that is a murder mystery. Between all the manoeuvring between Xavier and Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson), the deaths and betrayals, and the potential for life still to be going on outside, it is here that the show does fall a bit flat in its final moments. Part of it is because The Librarian (Ian Merrigan) is just not a compelling character, even before you process all the coincidences that needed to line up for it to happen. More than that, it felt like they were trying to shoehorn in a new story and subtext in the final moments without the appropriate buildup throughout the season.

In the end, do we recommend Paradise? Much like a gymnast doing a vault through the air, it was stunning to watch all the twists and turns this season had, and while they may not have stuck the landing, I don’t think that takes away from the rest of the season. Have you seen Paradise yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Paradise
Directed by – Glenn Ficarra, John Requa, Gandja Monteiro & Hanelle M. Culpepper
Written by – Dan Fogelman, Katie French, Jason Wilborn, Scott Weinger, Stephen Markley, Gina Lucita Monreal, John Hoberg & Nadra Widatalla
Created by – Dan Fogelman
Production/Distribution Companies – 20^th Century Television, Hulu, Star & Disney+
Starring – Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson, Sarah Shahi, Nicole Brydon Bloom, Aliyah Mastin, Percy Daggs IV & James Marsden with Ian Merrigan, Krys Marshall, Matt Malloy, Charlie Evans, Michelle Meredith, Cornelius Macarthy, Erik Svedberg-Zelman, Tuc Watkins, Richard Robichaux, Annie Karstens, Mike Ostroski, Enuka Okuma, Scott Lawrence, Amy Pietz, David Aaron Baker, Joe Holt, Geoffrey Arend, Tyler Jacob Moore, Walter Belenky, Michael Hogan, Bob Woodruff, Dean Cameron, Gerald McRaney, Jon Beavers, Cassidy Freeman, Angela Lin, Carlos Sanz, Benjamin Koldyke, Chibuikem Uche, Vien Hong & Glynn Turman And Rafael Cabrera, Laith Wallschleger, Eddie Diaz, Darin Toonder, Verlon Roberts, Kate Godfrey, J.D. Hall, Elinor Gunn, Edward Singletary Jr., Karina Noelle Castillo, Alvin Cowan, Patrick Cavanaugh, Kristin Carey, Jennifer Shon, Micha Fitzgerald, Beau McConnell, Ca’Ron Jaden Coleman, Peter Gorbis, Copen Earl, Kayla Njeri & Mark Kwak
Episodes Covered – Wildcat is Down, Sinatra, The Architect of Social Well-Being, Agent Billy Pace, In the Palaces of Crowned Kings, You Asked for Miracles, The Day & The Man Who Kept the Secrets