Reviewed by Alicia Glass
Top Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins investigates the murder of President Cal Bradford inside an isolated community with a lot of hidden secrets.
Okay, so this is a brand new twist on a fairly well-used political and crime drama trope of Presidential assassination, taking place in a post-apocalyptic setting that looks like everyone in the underground city called Paradise just stepped out of The Truman Show. But we know even that movie was completely false and hid a ton of secrets and cameras everywhere, so make sure your all-access wristband is in place and lets dive into this!
So Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) is a stoic man, determined to carry out his job to the utmost of his considerable abilities, despite the fact that his charge, President Cal Bradford (James Marsden), is a flawed man who prefers his adult drinks and 80’s nostalgia rock tunes to the pressure of being in charge of whats left of the United States. Cal Bradford is the man who had to shoulder everything when word came down that an inescapable Extinction Level Event, or ELE, was going to happen to the world above, and continue to be in charge as difficult choices of who was going to be evacuated to the underground city and who wasn’t were being made, navigating the actual evacuations and their traumatizing aftermath, and oh yeah, rebuilding into some semblance of a normal life after all that. That kind of pressure would drive lesser men to eat bullets, and though Cal does seem to be kind of coming apart at the seams after all that under Xavier’s resigned observation, he’s dealing with these extraordinary circumstances as best he possibly can.
Like many Presidents sadly, Cal’s personal life is a bit of a shambles – his one teenage son Jeremy (Charlie Evans) wants not one thing to do with him, his wife Jessica (Cassidy Freeman) is completely estranged from him and they only have a good relationship in front of cameras, and oh yeah, Cal is also sleeping with a high-ranking Secret Service Agent Nicole Robinson (Krys Marshall) on the sly. It doesn’t help that Cal’s dementia-stricken dad, former oil baron Kane Bradford (Gerald McRaney) sees Cal simply as a paper copy of his politically ambitious self, and a poor one at that, a placeholder for the Bradford name as the leader of the free world who is, in reality, in charge of very little. All these things and so much more become suddenly terribly relevant when Cal turns up dead and Xavier insists on investigating what is clearly his murder.
Sadly, Xavier had his own personal beef with Cal Bradford that he was never quite able to get around, that Xavier’s wife Dr. Teri Rogers-Collins (Enuka Okuma) went out to help the people with her medical skills when the ELE started hammering down, and consequently didn’t make it to the very last plane that took everyone to Paradise. Despite Cal’s genuine sadness at this turn of events, Xavier never forgave him for apparently widowing him and his two energetic kids, daughter Presley (Aliyah Mastin) and son James (Percy Daggs IV).
Henry Baines (Matt Malloy), Vice President of the United States and Bradfords’ chosen successor, is absolutely terrified at the idea of running things here in Paradise, not that he has much choice. But honestly, the office of the President is just a figurehead, for the real people running the show are moving in the shadows with their own agenda, from even before the ELE took place.
The woman called Sinatra or Samanatha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), the worlds richest self-made woman from before, continues to move in a determined “my way” fashion that earned her her nickname down here in the bunker. Sinatra makes the real decisions, has the real clout to carry them out, and is actually the one most directly responsible for getting the bunker under the Colorado mountains made in the first place, which she feels entitles her to decide damn near every aspect of the inhabitants lives thereafter. Including suborning Secret Service agents like Billy Pace (Jon Beavers) and Jane Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom) into shadowy assassinations, and other dastardly acts.
Of course everyone wants to know who killed Cal Bradford and why, but the answer has layers upon layers and each person searching for answers generally only has a piece of the puzzle that would be better served coming together with Agent Collins to figure out the whole picture. Jeremy Bradford especially feels guilty for how he left things with his father before Cal died, and as Jeremy and Presley start meeting in the library under the watchful if bemused eye of the librarian Trent (Ian Merrigan), a cute and sad little romance begins to bloom.
But, why? Why is Agent Collins’ investigation into the murder of the sitting President being blocked all over the place, woven along with insights into the under-workings of the city of Paradise itself, and how everything is connected along with not allowing anyone to actually leave the city? Painting the electronic sky with “They’re lying to you.” was only an opening gambit against the shadowy real powers behind the city leaders, and it just marks targets on the Collinses and their supporters.
In the end of Season 1, the Collins folk have found the Presidents murderer, engaged in the start of a revolution here in Paradise, and oh yeah, Agent Collins is now determined to do the most important thing in the world to him now that his Secret Service to the President job is over – go above and find his wife.
Paradise Season 1 can be devoured in its entirety on Hulu, and season 2 is expected to premiere in early 2026!