Review: Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden are terrific together in 'Paradise'
The first limited series of 2025 that's mostly worth your time and attention is "Paradise," an eight-part, eight-hour mystery now casting its sci-fi net on Hulu. With Hollywood delivering new product that's disposable or worse -- I'm looking at you "Flight Risk" "Back in Action" and "You're Cordially Invited" -- getting lost in a sudsy, streaming distraction is just the ticket.
And that's "Paradise" in a nutshell, especially since the reliably great, three-time Emmy winner Sterling K. Brown is its main attraction.
You should also know that "Paradise" is the creation of Dan Fogelman, the showrunner of "This Is Us," the smash, tear-jerking, time-jumping NBC drama series that starred Brown for all six seasons as Randall Pearson, the adopted, serious-minded Black son in a white family.
Brown is serious again in "Paradise," a tearjerking, time-jumping thriller in which Brown stars as Special Agent Xavier Collins, a Secret Service agent assigned to protect U.S. President Cal Bradford (James Marsden), who was murdered in the first episode that aired on Tuesday. Thanks to the time-jumping, Cal shows up a lot in flashbacks, and Marsden nails the role with humor and heart.
No worries about whodunit spoilers since Hulu did not send the final episode to critics. So we're all in the dark, except to note that "Paradise" is set in a man-made paradise in a dystopian future where a tsunami eradicated most of the global population, leaving only 25,000 survivors.
Within that fantasy element -- an all-service cave in the Colorado mountains with a digital sky -- "Paradise" spins around like a soap opera. Xavier managed to save his kids, Presley and brother James (Percy Daggs IV), but his missing wife is presumed dead, and for that, he blames Cal.
That puts Xavier is a downer mood, which limits the range of Brown's performance. Remember the loosened-up, gay livewire role that won Brown a supporting actor Oscar nomination for last year's "American Fiction?" There's little of that joie de vivre on display this time.
As Xavier, Brown is hyper-focused on solving Cal's murder. Among the suspects is Samantha Redmond (a superb Julianne Nicholson), a tech billionaire (how timely) known as "Sinatra" for her unflappable cool in any crisis. That comes in handy since the conniving Sinatra has been running the show even before the Prez ended up in a pool of his own blood.
Also arousing suspicion are Cal's sexy therapist Gabriela Torabi (Sarah Shahi), his dementia-addled dad (Gerald McRaney) and his moody son Jeremy (Charlie Evans). On Xavier's side, there's fellow agent Billy Pace (Jon Beavers), Xavier's dad (Glynn Turman), a pilot with Parkinson's, and his boss Nicole Robinson (Krys Marshall),who's had a secret affair with Cal.
Mix and stir those characters with a plot that zigs and zags so often your head will be spinning. By episode 7, when we finally see how our planet came close to dying, you'll be eager to learn how Fogelman manages to tie up so many loose ends.
There's also no way to pretend that getting there isn't a bumpy ride. Luckily, Fogelman knows how to polish cliches with the best of them. And he has just the expert actors to make it go down easy. Brown and Marsden are terrific together, trading banter while their characters hold back the impulse to kill each other for reasons that are eventually made abundantly clear.
Is "Paradise" brilliant? Nah. But it is wonderfully bingeable, perfect for those cold winter nights when you want to make the world go away and sink into the comfy pleasures of entertaining escapism. "Paradise" knows how it's done. Dig in.
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