Within the Hulu collection “Paradise,” Sterling Ok. Brown performs Xavier Collins, a Secret Service agent who exhibits as much as work one morning to search out the president lifeless on the ground of his bed room. Appears like homicide. However the official story — decided by these greater up the meals chain than Xavier — will likely be pure causes. Why? As a result of there’s a much bigger story happening.
Who killed the president, and why, is a MacGuffin within the eight-episode thriller. The true premise driving “Paradise” is a spoiler that’s revealed in Episode 1, however Hulu’s personal embargo is up with the discharge of the present’s first three episodes, so I will likely be discussing that premise right here. Should you want to go in chilly, right here’s your cue to put aside this evaluation till after you’ve watched.
The collection comes from Dan Fogelman, the creator of the NBC household drama “This Is Us,” who’s reteaming with Brown for a really completely different style. This outing, the pair have shifted their focus to speculative fiction wrapped inside an action-thriller. It’s a giant departure from the form of present that turned them into family names, and inventive selection like that is wholesome. If solely “Paradise” didn’t endure from a problem affecting too many exhibits: It ought to have been a film.
The president is known as Cal Bradford, performed by James Marsden. As an alternative of occupying the White Home, he’s wiling away his days in a mansion that’s situated in an eerily placid neighborhood with an uncanny “Truman Show” high quality, which is a tipoff. All just isn’t what it appears. That’s as a result of the ultra-rich have decamped to a suburban fantasia constructed in an uncommon location. How uncommon? Properly, it requires a man-made sky. Nothing is actual, not precisely. Sequestered in perpetual consolation, that is the place Cal resides in boring bliss earlier than he’s present in a pool of blood on the foot of his mattress.
“Paradise” begins within the center (the homicide) relatively than the start (the occasion that drove them into this place) and the jumbled timeline capabilities as a man-made spoiler that’s parceled out via the beneficiant use of flashbacks. Enjoying round with chronology will be intriguing. However generally it’s a method to cover flaws in an concept that isn’t strong sufficient to unfold so as. It’s all within the telling, proper? And a shuffled timeline can’t add what isn’t there when it comes to character improvement or emotional honesty.
“This Is Us” relied on flashbacks too, exploring the early life that formed one household’s dynamic. “Paradise” makes an attempt one thing comparable (whereas not going fairly thus far again in time), and but too typically these moments come throughout as reductive explanations for classy human conduct.
A single father of two, Xavier brings a stoic high quality to his work. He’s buttoned up and formal, with the bearing of a person who by no means slouches. He’s perpetually selecting his phrases fastidiously and clearly has many ideas that he’s determined are wiser left unsaid. In his marriage, Xavier’s spouse was the extra emotionally expressive one, however within the current, she’s conspicuously absent and finally we study why.
There’s a suggestion early on that Xavier may be affected by a deteriorating reminiscence or a mind damage. Earlier than heading out for a morning run, he writes on a whiteboard the complicated phrases: “Get brushed! Dress your teeth!” However any additional hints that one thing is amiss are rapidly deserted; Xavier could be very a lot on the ball and more and more skeptical concerning the fakey-perfect environment he now calls dwelling. Who can he belief and who’s conspiring behind his again? He’s able to shed his quiet resignation and respectability politics in favor of one thing extra proactive and renegade. It’s an ideal efficiency, caught in a present that doesn’t totally know what to do with it.
The architect of this fake metropolis, the place sunrises are generally delayed as a result of upkeep, is a tech billionaire performed by Julianne Nicholson. Grief is what drove her to megalomania and we see in flashbacks which emotional buttons had been pushed that led her there. However her backstory is simply too simplistic to work and the present isn’t within the hows and whys of the corrupting energy of large wealth.
Then there’s the president himself, the good-looking and charming son of one more billionaire (Gerald McRaney). Cal has daddy points and a behavior of consuming away his self-loathing and disappointments. More often than not he comes off as a ding-dong who failed his option to the highest. “Just another day in paradise,” he says sarcastically of their seemingly pretty however vaguely sinister neighborhood. Cal is definitely essentially the most intriguing character as written, as a result of there’s extra to him than meets the attention (revealed via but extra flashbacks) and Marsden performs each side of that coin — the spoiled wealthy child who’s his father’s pawn, and the person of substance buried inside — with actual nuance and ability.
Essentially, “Paradise” falls into the narrative rut that befalls most sci-fi exhibits predicated on a populace present long-term some place else, the place the highly effective have a vested curiosity in sustaining lies and manipulating perceptions. There are solely so some ways to inform that story, however I give “Paradise” credit score for locating a novel approach into it.
‘PARADISE’
2.5 stars (out of 4)
Ranking: TV-MA
The right way to watch: Hulu