Sterling K. Brown and Dan Fogelman owe a lot to each other. Both were successful working members of the Hollywood industry before working together on NBC’s hit drama This is Us, but that show helped them both achieve another tier of career success. Even though it was technically an ensemble, Brown won an Emmy for his role as Randall Pearson, proving he could be a bankable star for future projects. He was a major reason why that show connected so much with the general public, helping establish Fogelman as a showrunner who could get the greenlight for any project that peaks his interest.
On the surface, Hulu’s Paradise couldn’t be more different than the last collaboration between showrunner and star. Brown plays Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins, head of the detail for President Cal Bradford (James Marsden). Collins is a widower raising his two children on his own, dedicated to them and the job above all else. The monotonous routine of his day-to-day life is completely obliterated when he discovers Bradford dead in his bedroom. He’s lying on his floor in a pool of his own blood, and his safe full of government secrets has been completely cleaned out. Collins was the last person to have seen him alive, which makes him a prime suspect for investigators, but he’s not the only one in need of questioning.
That’s the most basic way to explain the setup for Paradise, but in reality it’s only a small fraction of what this show is trying to accomplish. The intentionally vague premise of the eight episode series, which premieres with three episodes next week, reads like a standard political thriller. With lesser talent involved, the show could’ve been little more than your average streaming actioner, something akin to NETFLIX’s The Night Agent (which is fun in its own way). Though the suspense of the story is definitely a priority, Fogelman’s emotive storytelling style shines through and makes Paradise at least a little more unique than the rest of its peers.
There are two narrative tools that Fogelman consistently resurrects from This is Us in Paradise (he wrote the first two episodes). The first is the flashback. Each episode seems to split its time evenly in the past and present. As Xavier tries to put the pieces together, the audience is given the opportunity to fill in the gaps and learn more about the personal lives of these characters. For example, you don’t hire James Marsden just to kill him off in the opening moments of your series, so you can bet he reappears numerous times to provide context to his relationship with Xavier and offer up new clues about his demise.
The second tool of the trade frequently utilized is an impactful plot twist. Paradise uses quite a few to punctuate the ending of its episodes. As soon as questions are answered, new ones are asked, which gives the series a necessary momentum and helps it avoid getting stale. “The little things are going to matter,” says one character in an early episode, and that could be seen as a mantra for the show’s audience to adopt. Some of these twists are more predictable and implausible than others, but there is at least one that completely recontextualizes what the entire show is trying to do on a thematic level, a nice surprise for a viewer who hopes to go in completely blind.
The show is admittedly uneven, and for as earnest as the emotional beats can be, the dialogue to deliver that emotion is sometimes clunky. That’s where this cast is a huge asset, a great ensemble of veteran actors that help smooth out any rough edges. Brown is such a sturdy presence, charismatic even when he’s playing a character who is often stoic at his best and deeply sad at his worst. Marsden gives a much more expressive performance. He plays the southern progressive Bradford like a cross between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, likable even when he’s drinking like a sailor and blurting out vaguely racist jokes. The comradery and the mysterious tension of Xavier and Bradford’s relationship make up some of the best scenes in the series.
The third major name in Paradise’s ensemble is Julianne Nicholson, whose role is better left discovered as you watch the show. All you need to know is that she’s someone with significant influence over Bradford and the policies of other key decision-makers. As the curtain is pulled back on her character’s intentions and the events that brought her to this point, Nicholson delivers a performance that is as strong and reliable as we’ve come to expect from her. Other highlights of the cast include The Wire’s Glynn Turman as Xavier’s father, The Righteous Gemstones’ Cassidy Freeman as the grieving First Lady and Animal Kingdom’s Jon Beavers as one of Xavier’s top agents.
I don’t think Paradise is the kind of show that will get a big push come Emmy time, and I’m not sure it even deserves that. But it’s entertaining in a way that doesn’t really exist anymore. Ten, even five years ago, this could’ve been a big hit on ABC. As a Hulu exclusive trying to survive in the crowded landscape of streaming tv, Paradise deserves credit for working on multiple levels, worried about both plot and character enough to make you genuinely care when the danger ratchets up.
Paradise premieres on January 28th with three episodes on Hulu.
