'Paradise' Restored My Belief in TV with One Great Twist
Paradise, a new Disney+ series starring Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden, contains a twist in the premiere that reminds me exactly why I love TV. Here's why: I missed the incredibly satisfying feeling of watching a Big Idea unravel before my eyes—and knowing that I'm either watching a new series that I'll tell everyone about, or lament to everyone who'll listen about how said series fumbled its Big Idea. I can't say which way Paradise will swing, but I’m heavily intrigued.
The story follows Xavier Collins (Brown), a single father of two and President Cal Bradford's (Marsden) dedicated Secret Service head. (James Marsden as POTUS? Okay!) All hell breaks loose when Collins arrives to work and finds the President dead in his bedroom surrounded by a pool of blood. But that's not the twist, folks.
As the investigation kicks off, Paradise's characters continually flash bizarre technology. Everyone pays for food and drinks with some sort of digital wristband. A man standing in a pond winds a group of mechanical ducks into action. Collins reads a bus sign that says the sunset will occur two hours later than scheduled “due to maintenance.” There’s something strange happening in the background of Paradise—which Hulu led us to believe was a relatively standard political-espionage series. Something like The Night Agent meets The Diplomat.
Spoilers incoming: Paradise is very much not that show. It is not set in Washington D.C. Some unspeakable extinction-level event has occurred on Earth, forcing 25,000 people to live in a man-made city under a mountain in Colorado. Who killed the President? I’ve seen that TV show. Humanity now lives in a giant high-tech bunker? Now we’re talking.
Created by Dan Fogelman (This Is Us), Paradise has the feel of a wacky '00s cable sci-fi show. Remember Heroes, Lost, 24, The Event, FlashForward, Awake, and Manifest? You may not recognise all these shows. I won’t lie—they are not all hits. But they all share one thing in common. The respective creators were not afraid of networks cancelling their series before the season 1 finale even aired. Each and every one took risks.
Most of the titles you'll find on streaming services nowadays are the product of taste clusters and algorithms that spit out shows designed to retell you the plot every ten minutes just in case you’re folding laundry or scrolling through TikTok. Did you like Reacher? Well, there’s a dozen more guys all leading their own shows named John Tracker or Peter Spyfield just waiting for you to hit play. It’s not bad TV, exactly. Everyone could use a little time to smooth out their brains now and then. These shows just can’t grip you like a real, hard-earned mystery. The Night Agent will survive. He has seven more seasons to film. Paradise? God only knows.
Though the potential to see Paradise burn down in flames in just a few episodes is just as enticing to me, there’s a few major reasons why I believe Paradise has staying power. For starters, the reunion of Sterling K. Brown and Dan Fogelman following a series as popular as This Is Us is substantial. Anyone who has seen Brown's talents on display already understands that he’s one of the best actors in Hollywood. If I learned anything from recent shows such as The Agency or The Penguin, stars of this caliber immediately transform a show for the better. Plus, any depiction of the president on television today will perk my ears up—especially since Marsden’s idea of a politician is so otherworldly that I honestly should have seen the dystopian-city twist coming.
Following a three-episode premiere, it's not easy to recommend shows that take swings like Paradise. Even modern 24-esque dramas such as Yellowjackets and Silo are tough to recommend today. There’s just not enough brain space to remember every clue or sequence of numbers that might one day let us down when the mystery is finally revealed. (Unless you're Severance, of course.)
For now, Paradise is working with the right ideas. I’m hoping that it sticks the landing.
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