Paradise, Disney+ review - enigmatic drama with an unknown destination

The latest from the This Is Us creator, Dan Fogelman, is a futuristic take on relationships among survivors once Earth has suffered an extinction event, a popular concept in these troubled times. Except that it starts out by following an equally popular narrative track, the classic locked-door whodunit. Where is this heading?

We are in what seems to be a fairly upscale American suburb. An athletic Black man (Sterling K Brown) we have watched wake up, get dressed and go running checks in with colleagues at the front gate of a luxurious mansion. Slowly we are made aware that these are no ordinary security guards but part of the detail looking after a serious VIP, the President of what used to be the USA, Cal Bradford (James Marsden, pictured below). The running man is Agent Xavier Collins, head of this detail. And the town he is in, the soundtrack’s sampling of the Phil Collins hit handily reveals, is called Paradise.  

This coy release of key information continues. The President will appear in numerous flashbacks, which is great news for James Marsden fans, but [spoiler alert] he was murdered before the first episode rolled. And Agent Collins was the last person to see him, it seems. Unhelpfully, the CCTV that would have helped identify people who entered the President’s room after Collins signed off was disconnected soon afterwards and only turned on again several hours later. And DNA testing that would help identify the killer will take at least a day, if not longer, “down here”.

The oddness of the show’s visuals now demand attention. Everything looks slightly bleached out, the colours onscreen hovering between full colour and monochrome. Does this indicate we are watching one big flashback, events mediated in somebody's memory? Suddenly, the idyllic nature of the town seems odd too, a cookie-cutter ideal community where the days are always sunny, people friendly, an ideal model of community life.

By the end of episode three, we have learnt why this is, and who has built up the town, a tech squillionaire called Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson, pictured below), known to her team as “Sinatra” (it’s a Rat Pack thing). Her immense wealth has come from inventing a hit app, but then she lost her son to an unnamed illness, and her marriage died with him.

This makes her bond with Collins, who has similarly lost a loved one, his physicist wife, for which he blames the President and thereby acquires a motive for his murder. Sinatra’s sidekick, a shrink called Gabriela (Sarah Shahi), seems the only person Collins can trust in seeking the truth about Bradford’s death. But can he? She passes on to him a warning about somebody he knows who can’t be trusted… really?

There Is more pleasure to be had, perhaps, from simply watching this series than from reviewing it. Most of the fun for the viewer comes from trying to outflank the slow-moving plot – so you wouldn’t thank me for revealing any more of its slim portfolio of secrets than I already have. What also rewards is the excellent cast, Brown in particular. He has a gravitas and emotional intelligence worthy of a man with degrees from Stanford and NYU, but he ticks all the more obvious boxes as a male lead too, strong and sexy. His scenes with his ailing pilot father are poignant, his bromance with the President highly plausible. He's a classy actor who needs more substantial fare.

Marsden once again plays second fiddle with an effortless wittiness, a screen President who references the easy, boyish charm of Obama along with the womanising of JFK. And Nicholson makes what she can of an unusual role, a sharp-witted female entrepreneur with a brisk manner and a now inscrutable emotional life, her younger, softer self mangled and apparently wiped out by life's vicissitudes

But so far there is an air of retread about the series, an amalgam of elements from The Truman Show, Under the Dome and Wandavision. I’m reserving final judgment until it makes its intentions clearer. 

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