Paradise Season 1 review (2025)
Paradise is an extraordinarily crafted mystery thriller with a plethora of compelling characters and unexpected twists.
Over the course of eight highly intense episodes, Paradise plays out like a hybrid of 24, Lost and Snowpiercer (available on Amazon).
Paradise is very much set up like a puzzle but there’s no need to try and piece it together to solve the mystery.
Showrunner Dan Fogelman (This Is Us) slowly parcels out key morsels of information. This largely helps prevent the audience from getting too far ahead of the characters who are also trying to crack the mystery themselves. Paradise is the kind of series that’s best knowing as little as possible on the first viewing. That also makes for a challenging recap so at this point be warned, major spoilers are ahead.
The show is ironically titled as it might seem like paradise, but a deeper look beyond the veil shows it’s hardly ideal. Earth faced a catastrophic natural disaster that was the only excuse the world’s leaders needed to launch a full-scale nuclear attack.
Forewarned about this pending disaster, US leadership under the direction of billionaire Samantha (Julianne Nicholson), spent countless resources and money creating a bunker city for a small portion of the country.
Among them are Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown, Waves) a Secret Service agent assigned to President Cal Bradford (James Marsden). When Bradford is found dead in his room, Xavier launches an off-book investigation to determine the killer.
Brown is already one of the finest actors of his generation and delivers one of his finest with the first season Paradise. He’s already won a Best Actor in a Drama Series Emmy for his work on This Is Us and was a Best Supporting Actor nominee for American Fiction. It feels like a matter of time before he wins another Emmy for Paradise. Despite Brown’s now standard excellent work, Paradise is far from a one-man show.
Xavier’s investigation won’t be easy as there are plenty of viable suspects.
The most obvious is Samantha, who’s called Sinatra as she likes things her way. Samantha is hardly a demure presence. A tragedy prior to the end of the world shattered her moral code so she has little patience for niceties or treating people decently. They’re more chess pieces for Sinatra to move as she sees fit. If Paradise has a villain, it would be Sinatra but simply labeling her the antagonist feels limiting.
Another is Billy Pace (Jon Beavers), Xavier’s fellow agent who has several skeletons in his closet. He’s dating fellow agent Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom), who’s not as naïve as she appears. In addition to his investigation, Xavier has to worry about his children — Presley (Aliyah Mastin) and James (Percy Daggs IV) — staying safe.
Xavier also has to do due diligence on Agent Robinson (Krys Marshall), who had close ties to Cal. Cal’s father (Gerald McRaney, another This Is Us alumni) and son, Jeremy (Charlie Evans), aren’t likely suspects but Xavier has to consider every possibility. A major wildcard is Sinatra’s therapist, Dr. Gabriela (Sarah Shahi), who isn’t sure which side to back.
There aren’t any lackluster episodes, but the season’s penultimate episode — The Day — is one of the best singular episodes of TV that I’ve seen in several years.
The show is told in a non-linear format with each episode providing more details and backstory on a particular character. Paradise is laid out in a way that the culprit isn’t obvious, but collecting clues and piecing together more elements of the story is a large part of the fun.
Most of that is due to the stellar performances. Nicholson gives a delightfully villainous turn as Sinatra, but she does give Samantha moments of vulnerability to cause some doubt if she’s truly an outright monster. Marsden easily delivers his career best work. He makes Cal such a nuanced tragic character that he elicits a wide range of emotions. His work in The Day is outstanding.
Paradise doesn’t have many questionable character decisions or the kind of plot holes that derail subplots. Over the course of the eight episodes, there’s just one telegraphed outcome. That one played out like the character really should have known better.
The soundtrack is a crucial element of the series as well. It’s comprised of classic 80s songs naturally including Phil Collins’ iconic Another Day in Paradise. Regardless of viewing preference, week to week or in binge fashion, Paradise will keep viewers invested to see how the story plays out right through to the rewarding season finale that opens up plenty of potential for the second season.
Rating: 10 out of 10
Photo Credit: Disney/Hulu
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