Paradise (2025) review

    Paradise is a 2025 political thriller that shockingly diverts into a science fiction one after the first episode. It’s one of those things that is best experienced without spoilers so if you want to enjoy Paradise in the best manner possible, you should go and watch it without reading any further. It’s a good series. There are some flaws but it is a solid and serious take on the subjects it tackles. It also has a truly spectacular seventh episode. That’s about as much as I can say about the series without spoiling anything.

    You ready for more?

    Okay then.

    The premise for Paradise is that Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) is the head of the United States Secret Service, protecting the President of the United States, Cal Bradford (James Marsden). Cal is assassinated and there’s a severe question of how the Secret Service could fail so utterly. A lot of allusion is made to things having gone horribly wrong as well as a once close friendship between the two that went horribly wrong. At the end of the first episode, we finally find at least one of those secrets out.

    You ready?

    No take backs.

    Specifically, the secret is that the two are living in a massive underground city and the rest of the world has been destroyed in some sort of unnamed catastrophe. The disaster was successfully predicted by a billionaire tech mogul, Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) who used both her and their government’s resources to make a luxury bunker to ride out the apocalypse.

    Paradise basically takes the premise of Fallout and proceeds to do it completely straight. If I had to make a comparison, I’d say it’s what happens if you combine Fallout with Lost. Every character is carrying immense survivor’s guilt as well as dealing with a variety of tragic backstories. America was not in its best shape even before the apocalypse and what happened to the surface world is another driving mystery. We get a decent set of answers to most of the pressing questions but, like all good writing, adds more questions.

    Sterling K. Brown does a fantastic job at making a lead that isn’t necessarily the most likable individual. His wife didn’t make it down to the bunker in time for it to be shut and his hatred for both the President he’s sworn to protect is only matched for his own. The fact his kids depend on him to provide a semblance of a normal life and the remainder of what qualifies as military force/security in the 10,000 person community falls under him doesn’t relieve his stress. James Marsden also gets to show off his acting chops as Cal is a somewhat Bill Clinton-esque figure who has his vices but was, ultimately, a good man in a horrifying situation. Much of the series deals with flashbacks to his tenure as President as well as setting up his life in the bunker.

9/10 

If the episode has a highlight and lowest point, it will be the seventh and eighth episodes. The seventh episode finally provides concrete answers as to what happened during the End of the World and how everyone responded to it. It is well-written, dramatic, and even genuinely horrifying at times. Some of the best television I’ve seen in the past decade. The eighth episode, sadly, provides a thoroughly unsatisfying answer to the President’s murder.

Paradise has a lot of themes of class consciousness, environmentalism, wealth inequality, government corruption, corporate malfeseance, and more but they’re all very subtle. All of the survivors in the bunker are the “lucky ones” that get to live in a climate controlled Rockwellian community while the rest of humanity has gone extinct (maybe). However, society is set up so there’s still people who clean the toilets, pour coffee, and serve an elite that doesn’t make any sense to have anymore.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend this series. It’s some of the best science fiction I’ve seen in years and certainly deserves to have many more people talking about it than I’ve seen. I was a bit disappointed by the final episode but absolutely want to see another season of this if not several more.