It’s only a few weeks into 2025, but Paradise is already a strong contender for the most bonkers show of the year.
There’s a troubled protagonist. He’s trying to solve a brutal death. There are shady characters galore. A run of the mill murder mystery, perchance?
Not so! We start peaceably enough, with Special Agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K Brown, our troubled protagonist in question) getting ready for his day at work. He’s head of the security detail for the President, you see – except he arrives in the morning to find that his boss has actually been brutally murdered.
As special forces descend on the President’s house, Xavier is suddenly plunged into a living hell of interrogations and suspicion: one that’s complicated by the fact he was the last person to see his former boss alive.
Now for the twist, which comes fortunately early but does turn the entire premise of the show on its head. As it turns out, they’re not in America at all. Well, they are, but the ‘Paradise’ of the show’s title is actually a bunker far below the ground that’s been designed to look like a city (bear with me).
The remainders of humanity have been camped out there ever since an unspecified world-ending event… and now, there’s a killer in their midst. As far as shock reveals go, it’s a doozy, and pivots the whole show from a generic murder mystery into an enjoyable silly ‘what if’ that aims for the kind of apocalyptic gravitas that The Last of Us managed to summon, and nose-dives short of it.
Yep. And from there, the show veers off sideways. As Xavier attempts to unravel the mystery – with nothing more to go off than one maybe-clue – one of the President’s cigarettes has a number written on it! What could it mean? – enemies with shady motives suddenly start popping up at every turn.
Who can he trust? Perhaps it’s the tight-lipped, perma-glaring Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson), who seems to run the whole commune with an iron fist? Perhaps it’s his violent, incompetent subordinate (Jon Beavers). Or perhaps it’s the gorgeous, mysterious and confident grief therapist (Sarah Shahi, alluring stare working overtime) who decides to assist him in his quest for answers (hint: it might be this one).
To be honest, the story is as flimsy as they come. Important plot points are glossed over. Xavier decides on one person’s guilt (and decides to trust another) with nothing more to go off than a gut feeling. There’s a doohickey with important secrets on it that of course has gone missing. Two characters decide to dodge potential bugging devices by having sex in a shower and whispering important secrets to each other.
Intertwined with all the Paradise bunker-action are sepia-toned flashbacks about how the characters actually got to where they are. That means we do actually get to see James Marsden as the late President, Cal Bradford, even if all he does is act rueful and charming and demonstrate his burgeoning alcohol addiction to the audience. We do also get insights into the characters populating the bunker, which are pulled off with varying levels of success and/ or cliché.
It’s kind of like The Truman Show crossed with Lost, and while the actors give it their all, it’s hard not to fight the urge to eye-roll. Everybody speaks seriously about the Future of the World. There’s nary a flicker of a smile. People are hiding troubled pasts and everything looks grey. For an enjoyable binge-watch, this will do nicely. But for glossy prestige TV – the area Paradise seems to be aiming for – it leaves you cold.
Streaming now on Disney+
