Some series begin like a slow build toward something. Paradise does not. It starts like a pressure wave. Not because anything explosive happens in the opening scene — but because everything feels off. Too neat. Too much white picket fence. Too many barbecue sausages and smiles. And as always, when people smile a little too hard in an American suburb, you know this is going to end badly.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
In Paradise, we enter a world that looks like an American commercial from the ’90s. There are neatly trimmed lawns, green parks, chirping birds and flags fluttering in the wind. It is exactly what you picture when someone says “the American Dream.” And as with all dreams, it is probably a little too good to be true.
The series follows agent Xavier Collins — played with almost unbearable grief and stoic moral clarity by Sterling K. Brown. A man who has seen too much, lost too much, and still refuses to close his eyes to what is happening around him. He protects the president — a brilliantly unhinged James Marsden — who has roughly as many secrets as he has bottles of whisky in the house. And that is saying a lot.
When the president is murdered, everything begins to crumble. Not just for Xavier, but for the whole tidy little community. We start to sense that something is wrong. Very wrong. A natural disaster. A dark past. Some very rich people with a little too much power and a little too little conscience. And then there is that slightly too polished tech billionaire (Julianne Nicholson), whom you love to hate because you know the type. We just have not seen her this sharply drawn before.
And then there is the music. Reworked ’90s classics that feel as if they are cutting their way into the series with surgical precision. Everything is timed to the second. Everything is built to crack — and it does. Slowly. Tremblingly. With a restlessness that feels more like paranoia than suspense. And it works.
Fogelman, the man behind This Is Us and Only Murders in the Building, has here created his most ambitious and fully realised series to date. Where This Is Us played on emotion and Only Murders on charm, Paradise is simply an ice-cold bottle of truth in the middle of a warm illusion.
There is not a single character in the series who is not hiding something. Not one you can fully trust. And that is probably the most frightening thing of all. Because as the series unfolds, it becomes clear that this is not just a murder mystery or a conspiracy. It is about trust. About power. About who controls what. And why.
A conclusion without a conclusion:
Paradise is one of those series that leaves you staring at the screen long after the credits have rolled. Not because you are waiting for a post-credit scene. But because you need a moment to breathe again. We had expected a solid Disney+ thriller. What we got was an existential nightmare wrapped in suburban idyll. It is almost too well made. And that is exactly why it is so unsettling.
