Sterling K. Brown stars in "Paradise."

 

Sterling K. Brown stars in "Paradise."

  Credit: Disney/Brian Roedel

SERIES "Paradise"

WHERE Hulu

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) is a Secret Service agent tasked with protecting President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) while he's in office, and afterward — while Bradford's living in bucolic retirement in a sprawling McMansion where during his off-hours he slings back whiskeys and entertains another member of his security detail (Krys Marshall, "For All Mankind"). One morning, Collins finds his boss dead — murdered. Before he calls in the police and the rest of the cavalry, Collins conducts his own quick impromptu investigation. Then the hammer threatens to fall on him, when another top Bradford official, Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson, "Mare of Easttown," for which she won an Emmy), wonders what took him so long to call in reinforcements.

This series — three episodes drop Tuesday — reunites Brown with showrunner Dan Fogelman, who created "This Is Us."


 

MY SAY Fogelman is best known for "This Is Us" — now recalled as network TV's last and perhaps last-ever megahit. But the show that's actually a better comparison to "Paradise" may be "Only Murders in the Building" because as "OMITB's" executive producer, Fogelman obviously needs to have his murder-mystery tropes down cold: The flawed victim. The red herring. The MacGuffin. The race against time. The flashbacks — oh yes, the flashbacks, and lots of them.

"Paradise" is a wild exercise in spanning genres, from postapocalyptic thriller to family drama, but at its heart lies the whodunit or, in this case, who-dun-in the former president? Figuratively speaking, was it Col. Mustard in the ballroom with the candlestick? Or Miss Scarlet in the lounge with the wrench? There are lots of clues, and almost too many suspects. President Bradford was a raffish rascal with plenty of enemies, including his own bodyguard, who admits to him (in flashback) a certain desire to see his own boss dead too. There's an Elon Musk-styled trillionaire too — Nicholson's Redmond — upon whom suspicion will and must inevitably fall.

In fact, there are plenty of other suspects, each more or less plausible depending on how far or deep the show gets into their backstories. As with "This Is Us," "Paradise" is an onion form of storytelling, peeled layer by layer (by layer) to get to the reveal. As a viewer, this requires patience when all you really want is an answer or at least momentum. "Paradise" can be parsimonious with both.

To say anything more about the postapocalyptic backstory here would be a massive spoiler except to confirm that it arrives by the end of Tuesday's opener — a pleasing gobsmack of a surprise that you probably won't see coming, or at least I didn't. In an obvious sense, that's the whole idea here. "Paradise" is a shell game that forces you keep your eyes focused on one story (that whodunit) when a much bigger and potentially better one is just off screen.

As "This Is Us" fans will recall, Fogelman pulled off such a twist in the 2016 pilot — unconnected characters were actually siblings born the same day — which turned the show into something else altogether. The twist was always hiding in plain sight (the title) and is here as well.

"Paradise" is what TV executives used to call "high concept," except that any Fogelman show (or movie, like "Crazy, Stupid, Love") usually gets around to what he's really interested in — human relationships, romantic entanglements, tragic loss. There's a lot going on in "Paradise," but if this big swing of a series connects — a medium-size if — it'll be for that reason. The mysteries of the human heart are always more puzzling — and interesting — than any whodunit.

BOTTOM LINE A too-busy genre mishmash with (at least) a compelling twist.


 

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