Review of the series «Paradise»

On March 4, the first season of the political thriller «Paradise» ended on the Hulu platform, but in fact, such a characterization would be incomplete because the project is a bizarre cocktail of several genres. Read our review to find out which other genres the show’s authors refer to, what other hit series it is associated with, and what it looks like in general.

Pluses:

there is room for surprises; the characters are well developed and have adequate motives for certain actions; good acting; in general, albeit with some reservations, an interesting story of different genres;

Minuses:

In fact, half of the season is boring; the story is somewhat secondary and contains typical genre tropes;

7/10

Rating
ITC.ua

«Paradise»

Genre political thriller and more
Showrunner Dan Fogelman
Starring Sterling K. Brown, James Marsden, Julianne Nicholson, Chris Marshall, Sarah Shahi, Nicole Brydon Bloom, Aliyah Mastin, Percy Daggs IV
Premiere Hulu
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb

After his traditional morning jog and a good day at school, the head of the US Presidential Security Service, Xavier Collins, begins his next shift. However, Mr. President, a young whiskey and ’80s pop culture enthusiast named Cal Bradford, does not answer despite Collins’ persistent knocking on his office door. When the agent dares to enter, he is horrified to find the head of state lying on the floor with a crushed skull, a pool of blood around his head, and a tablet with state secrets missing from the safe.

A special team headed by Special Agent Nicole Robinson begins the investigation. Meanwhile, Collins, having recovered from the initial shock, is also trying to figure out what happened. In his attempts to get to the truth, he is faced with numerous mysteries and discoveries much more shocking and large-scale than the death of the country’s leader.

After the successful «This Is Us» (2016—2022) «Paradise», showrunner Dan Fogelman and actor Sterling K. Brown are reunited. At the beginning, the series really seems to be what it was positioned as in the announcements and trailers — a dark political thriller multiplied by a detective intrigue of the caliber of «Who Killed the President of the United States? Just recently, Netflix released another large-scale project with a star cast in the same genre — «Zero Day», with the difference that instead of a murderer, they were looking for the organizers of a catastrophic cyber attack aimed at America. However, «Paradise» is still a bird of a different feather.

The circle of suspects includes numerous people close to the country’s leader — from agent Nicole Robinson, who was his mistress, to Xavier Robinson himself, who probably had a certain grudge against his boss. We are interested in finding answers together with the protagonist, and here the show’s authors manage to intrigue and, as they say, hook the viewer. This happens, among other things, thanks to the powerful ending of the episode, which almost immediately hits you under the breath and turns the story upside down.

However, all the achievements of the rapid and powerful beginning come to naught later on: the screenwriters choose a much slower pace of narration, aimed at digging into the past of the characters, building adequate motives for their behavior, and finally adding drama somewhere. This is not a bad thing, and from a dramaturgical point of view it is even good, but it greatly slows down the pace. The plot is full of a huge number of flashbacks that slowly reveal the characters’ personalities and play an important role in what we see in the current timeline.

Cliffhangers are traditionally reserved for the episode finals of — «Paradise», probably the world champion in spectacular endings backed by stylish music, including covers of world retro hits (you can hear interpretations of the cult «Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door» Bob Dylan or Survivor’s «Eye of the Tiger», for example). But before these endings, which pass for real revelations and remind us of series from the 2000s, when such drama was in vogue, we have to endure an average of 45-50 minutes of not the most interesting dialog. And this will continue at least until the second half of the season.

The second half of the season, or rather episodes six through eight, seems much more exciting than the sometimes boring tossing and turning in episodes two through five, which naturally turn out to be the calm before the storm. In the sixth episode, in addition to a clear biblical allusion (it’s not for nothing that the series is called «Paradise»), the characters resort to the wisest quotes by John McClane: there are pearls about the newly, ho-ho-ho, seized weapons and the classic «yippee-kai-yay, motherf#cker», of course.

But if there’s one thing worth watching, it’s the reference episode — definitely the best of the season. Despite the local, very realistic, apocalyptic nature, large-scale disaster in the spirit of Roland Emmerich’s blockbusters is left almost out of the picture, but this approach is even more intriguing. Instead, the creators offer pure suspense from the first to the last minute, because the air in the White House at this moment is no less electrified than during the meeting between Zelensky and Trump. And in the season finale, «Silo» comes to mind again, and there is a clear impetus for a sequel.

If one of the characters promises the protagonist «to tell everything tomorrow», then you can be sure that he will not live to see tomorrow. If the resistance forces dare to open the eyes of the population, we can expect dystopian «they are lying to you». The detective intrigue itself is executed in the best traditions of «murderer — gardener» exposés. In one of the scenes, and this is more of an interesting observation, the US president faces a fateful choice, where, as if the spirit of Morpheus, blue and red colors appear.

In general, «Paradise» can be divided into segments: the beginning, which is intriguing; the more boring part, which mostly prepares the ground for the decisive events; and the much more dynamic final episodes, which are designed to provide answers to the mysteries scattered throughout the plot. And while one shouldn’t expect any new details about the Kennedy assassination, as James Marsden’s character sadly states, the murder of Cal Bradford is getting really interesting.