Sterling K Brown, Randall in This is Us, and Dan Fogelman, the creator of that series, reunite here. And although the tone and plot couldn’t be more different, this jaw-dropping conspiracy thriller recalls This is Us in the way both shows move back and forth between the present and the past, and because both have pilot episodes ending with a shocker that sets up the rest of the series. Brown plays Xavier Collins, once a Secret Service agent assigned to the President (James Marsden). About the only thing Xavier has in common with Randall is that they are both very smart guys. The White House scenes are in flashback, and the present day takes place in a community that looks so sanitised and stereotypically small-town that the sets might have been borrowed from the pseudo-heaven of The Good Place. There are major twists in every episode, but it’s no spoiler to say that the series is intense and compelling, and that Julianne Nicholson, as the most powerful woman on Earth, plays wonderfully against her usual good-hearted, down-to-earth type.
Paradise premieres 28 January on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK
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