In the Hulu series “Paradise,” Sterling K. Brown plays Xavier Collins, a Secret Service agent who shows up to work one morning to find the president dead on the floor of his bedroom. Looks like murder. But the official story — determined by those higher up the food chain than Xavier — will be natural causes. Why? Because there’s a bigger story going on.
Who killed the president, and why, is a MacGuffin in the eight-episode thriller. The real premise driving “Paradise” is a spoiler that’s revealed in Episode 1, but Hulu’s secret is out with the release of the show’s first three episodes, so I will be discussing that premise here. If you prefer to go in cold, here’s your cue to set aside this review until after you’ve watched.
The series comes from Dan Fogelman, the creator of the NBC family drama “This is Us,” who is re-teaming with Brown for a very different genre. This time out, the pair have shifted their focus to speculative fiction wrapped inside an action-thriller. It’s a big departure from the kind of show that turned them into household names, and creative variety like this is healthy. If only “Paradise” didn’t suffer from an issue affecting too many shows: It should have been a movie.
The president is named Cal Bradford, played by James Marsden. Instead of occupying the White House, he’s wiling away his days in a mansion that’s located in an eerily placid community with an uncanny “Truman Show” quality, which is a tipoff. All is not what it seems. That’s because the ultra-rich have decamped to a suburban fantasia constructed in an unusual location. How unusual? Well, it requires an artificial sky. Nothing is real, not exactly. Sequestered in perpetual comfort, this is where Cal is living in boring bliss before he’s found in a pool of blood at the foot of his bed.
“Paradise” starts in the middle (the murder) rather than the beginning (the event that drove them into this place) and the jumbled timeline functions as an artificial spoiler that is parceled out through the generous use of flashbacks. Playing around with chronology can be intriguing. But sometimes it’s a technique to hide flaws in an idea that isn’t robust enough to unfold in order. It’s all in the telling, right? And a shuffled timeline can’t add what isn’t there in terms of character development or emotional honesty.
“This is Us” relied on flashbacks too, exploring the formative years that shaped one family’s dynamic. “Paradise” attempts something similar (while not going quite so far back in time), and yet too often these moments come across as reductive explanations for complicated human behavior.
A single father of two, Xavier brings a stoic quality to his work. He’s buttoned up and formal, with the bearing of a man who never slouches. He is forever choosing his words carefully and clearly has many thoughts that he’s decided are wiser left unsaid. In his marriage, Xavier’s wife was the more emotionally expressive one, but in the present, she’s conspicuously absent and eventually we learn why.
There’s a suggestion early on that Xavier might be suffering from a deteriorating memory or a brain injury. Before heading out for a morning run, he writes on a whiteboard the confusing words: “Get brushed! Dress your teeth!” But any further hints that something is amiss are quickly abandoned; Xavier is very much on the ball and increasingly skeptical about the fakey-perfect surroundings he now calls home. Who can he trust and who is conspiring behind his back? He’s ready to shed his quiet resignation and respectability politics in favor of something more proactive and renegade. It’s a great performance, stuck in a show that doesn’t fully know what to do with it.
The architect of this faux city, where sunrises are sometimes delayed due to maintenance, is a tech billionaire played by Julianne Nicholson. Grief is what drove her to megalomania and we see in flashbacks which emotional buttons were pushed that led her there. But her backstory is too simplistic to work and the show isn’t interested in the hows and whys of the corrupting power of massive wealth.
Then there’s the president himself, the handsome and charming son of yet another billionaire (Gerald McRaney). Cal has daddy issues and a habit of drinking away his self-loathing and disappointments. Most of the time he comes off as a ding-dong who failed his way to the top. “Just another day in paradise,” he says sarcastically of their seemingly lovely but vaguely sinister community. Cal is actually the most intriguing character as written, because there’s more to him than meets the eye (revealed through yet more flashbacks) and Marsden plays both sides of that coin — the spoiled rich kid who is his father’s pawn, and the man of substance buried within — with real nuance and skill.
Fundamentally, “Paradise” falls into the narrative rut that befalls most sci-fi shows predicated on a populace existing long-term somewhere else, where the powerful have a vested interest in maintaining lies and manipulating perceptions. There are only so many ways to tell that story, but I give “Paradise” credit for finding a unique way into it.
“Paradise” — 2.5 stars (out of 4)
Where to watch: Hulu
Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.
