Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.
“This is Us” creator Dan Fogelman, who spent a portion of his childhood in Bethel Park, returns with his first new one-hour drama series since the partially Pittsburgh-set NBC drama ended in 2022.
Hulu’s “Paradise,” now streaming its first three (of eight) episodes, reunites Fogelman and “This is Us” star Sterling K. Brown (who played Randall on “TIU”) for a murder mystery set in Paradise, an upscale community inhabited by the country’s most prominent figures. (New episodes stream on Hulu weekly on Tuesdays; the first episode only will air at 10 p.m. Jan. 29 on ABC and at 10 p.m. Feb. 1. on FX)
Aside from profanity and nudity, “Paradise” feels like a broadcast network serial (think: “Manifest”), back when broadcasters made more than just the procedurals that predominate prime time now. “Paradise” turns out to be a mystery box conspiracy story with a big twist at the end of the first episode – more on that below; stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoiled. The show slowly peels back details of not only what is going on but also the motivation for many of the show’s primary players.
Like “This is Us,” “Paradise” leapfrogs through time beginning in the first episode as U.S. President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) turns up dead, his body discovered by loyal secret service agent Xavier Collins (Brown), who, in one of those deeply annoying only-on-TV choices, does not immediately radio for backup.
The first half of the series premiere moves at too slow a pace with many scenes of Collins jogging. The latter half of the episode grows more engrossing as flashbacks fill in the details of Collins’ and Bradford’s backgrounds and their working relationship. Bradford is a rich kid whose father bought him the presidency with a temperament that’s a cross between JFK and George W. Bush. Collins is a good guy who does the right thing, a family man in mourning after losing his wife.
It’s the end of the first episode where Fogelman puts his cards on the table, revealing the true nature of Paradise.
Spoilers below from the first two episodes:
Turns out the government had advance notice of some sort of mass extinction event, so they hollowed out a Colorado mountain and constructed Paradise, a city for 25,000 survivors, in an underground bunker, complete with streets, waterways and a fake sun overhead.
The whole facility was concocted by Samantha (Julianne Nicholson), code name Sinatra, a mom devasted by the death of her young son.
Other stars in featured roles include Krys Marshall (“For All Mankind”), Sarah Shahi (“Sex/Life”) and Gerald McRaney (“This is Us”).
Eventually, the show reveals one of its characters to be a power-hungry, mustache-twirling villain. That “Paradise” acknowledges this in the character’s dialogue does nothing to excuse it. That’s the frustrating thing about “Paradise:” It toggles between compelling moments, mostly featuring Brown and/or the cataclysmic event, and people spouting uninspired TV dialogue that renders the characters one-dimensional.
In a virtual press conference for “Paradise,” Fogelman said he had the idea for this show after meeting with a “well-known rich guy in the entertainment industry” early in his career, long before Fogelman wrote “This is Us.” On his way home from the meeting, a crane dropped something heavy that made a loud boom, scaring Fogelman and leading him to think, when things go bad, “we’re all going to be in the same position. And I started thinking about people who take care of people with great power.”
Brown, who also has an executive producer credit on “Paradise,” said while he finds it “very cool when people scream out, ‘Randall!,’ to be known for a diverse body of work is probably something slightly more fulfilling, so you’re always looking to do something different with the next project.”
Collins is a family man like Randall, a depiction Brown sees as an important use of media and representation, “a gorgeous thing to put out into the world.” But Brown finds clear distinctions between Randall and Collins.
“Randall was somebody who wore his emotions on his sleeve and Xavier keeps things close to the vest and he’s probably closer to how a lot of men deal with their emotions,” Brown said. “Randall is an outlier in that way.”
Marsden called Fogelman’s depiction of President Bradford unconventional.
“He’s definitely a broken, flawed man and we get to explore a lot of that in the show,” Marsden said of his character. “You see him as a human being who’s carrying a lot of regret but constantly trying to wake up in the morning and do the right thing.”
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By the end of the first season of “Paradise,” Fogelman promised the question of “who killed President Bradford?” will be answered. He acknowledged some mystery box shows frustrate viewers by refusing to quickly provide answers to questions raised by a show’s premise.
“A big part of our goal was how can we make a complicated mystery, what’s the big conspiracy and what happened to (President Bradford), so by the end of the first season you have this satisfying meal,” Fogelman said. “You keep getting answers and asking more questions until the end of the season when you have it all.”