Paradise

Year of release : 2025

Run time : 46 - 57m / 8 episodes / 1 season

Genre : Post Apocalyptic Political Thriller / Mini Series

Cast : James Marsden, Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson, Sarah Shahi, Jon Beavers

Episode 1

Agent Xavier Collins can't sleep, so he wakes up early to run. Back home, he talks to his kids, and goes to work. He is the head of security for the American president. Once at the president's place, he finds out he didn't wake up yet, so he goes to check in on him, and finds him dead in a pool of his own blood. He starts looking around, not telling people what he discovered. He sees a pair of earrings, and recognizes them.

He asks for the video footage, and sees the agent on the job was sleeping, while the cameras were down for 2 hours. He tries to make sense of it all until the police come and they lose jurisdiction.

We see him in the past, when the president was re-elected, and he was looking for a new security lead agent. After agent Collins saves the president's life (being shot in the shoulder), the president lets him in on a secret having to do with an extension level event.

Now, we find out the box with a classified project is missing.

Also, Collins tells the president he hates him for something, and he'll stop doing when he's d3ad.

Episode 2

We find out the people in this place live deep underground, under a sort of dome, with a fake sun.

The episode opens 12 years earlier, with "Sinatra" finding people who can build her the underground dome earth-bunker. This episode is dedicated to her, to how she made her money (by selling her start-up company,the stock market moving, making her a billionaire in a year),how she met her husband, and how one of her kids got sick and died, making her fearful for the other one's health, and creating the underground bunker based on her dead son's idea of paradise, naming it Paradise.

In the present, agent Collins is being interrogated and considered a threat for not calling anyone for 30 minutes while he investigated on his own.

"Sinatra", the owner of the bunker and the real "president", decides to tell the 25 000 people in her bunker the president died of natural causes, so they won't be scared.

Episode 3

We are introduced to doctor Gabriela Torabi who when interrogating agent Collins asked him in a note written on her palm to "Say Yes".

Agent Collins goes to see her the next day, and she tells him about the place she help "Sinatra" build (by picking the people), in exchange for him talking about himself. She tells him Sinatra has microphones everywhere in the place she built, people's houses, offices..and that his best friend,Billy, is not to be trusted.

We also see the relationship agent Collins had with his father, who was a flying pilot.

Episode 4

The episode is dedicated to Billy, and we see the life he lived with his uncle who was violent. He ended up in the juvenile prison, and then was recruited as a mercenary.

He was hired by Sinatra to do her dirty work.

Episode 5

The year is 1997, and we see the president's life story, as he wanted to be a teacher, like his mother, but his father, whom he could never please no matter what he did, wanted him to become a politician. Even when he became the president of the USA for the 2nd time, his father didn't have anything nice to say to him.

The president seemed to have lived a pretty miserable life, as his son also hated him (although he was nothing but nice to him!), his wife wanted to divorce him since before his second term, and had a "facade marriage"; his father, who now has dementia, still talks down on him, and his lover is done with being a secret.

Although the president, he still didn't have high level clearance, and finds out his father did, and with his hand print, he finds out what's really going on around him, and outside the bunker,where there's life!

In the present, we see agent Collins noticing Sinatra is installing a new light on a street pole which didn't need fixing, meaning she is installing surveillance. He tells his neighbor, who has a dog, to be careful with it, and to whom he tells him about it, as they are not allowed with pets.

He also finds out Billy is dead, and Jane is very good at faking being meek, psychopath.

Episode 6

Agent Collins tells his kids they need to go into hiding, and asks his neighbor for a favor, to write on the sky.

Agent Collins' daughter doesn't listen, and goes to see her crush, the president's son. And that's how Sinatra gets her hands on her, through Jane.

Agent Robinson, who had an affair with the president, goes to see if what he told her before he died was true, that the guns are kept away from the population.

Sinatra is trying to take down the writing on the sky, which keeps on changing without rebooting the system.

Doctor Torabi finds out Sinatra spies on everyone, including her.

Episode 7

Sinatra tells agent Collins his wife is alive above ground, and we're taken back to "The Day" of the extension level event.

On "the day" a super volcano erupted under the ice sheet of Antarctica, flooding the world, and triggering a tsunami.

Although advised against it, agent Collins' wife went to Atlanta. He is trying to make sure she gets back safely, so they can all go to the bunker.

We see the president was the only decent person there, wanting to tell people the truth, and the impact the truth had on the world, and what living the life his father wanted, and having so many people's deaths on his conscience did to him.

Episode 8

Sinatra found out the DNA of the one who k1lled the president didn't match anyone's in the bunker, which means it's someone from outside.

Enter the man who tried to k1ll the president before, the one who actually shot agent Collins. He was the project manager who worked on the bunker. He found out the workers were being subjected to iron arsenic poisoning from excavating the earth, and when asking his superiors to do something about it, he was fired. The workers got sick, including the man's best friend. He considered the president responsible for it.

After escaping jail in a riot when the tsunami was coming, he headed for the bunker, found a pair who were on the list, k1lled them, and took their place.

I personally enjoyed the series. I liked how it was filmed, especially when someone was trying to figure something out,the visual effect.

But, I think this theory with building a bunker of such proportions works only with the hollow earth theory (and if so, we're not on a planet.Speaking of which.. did you know it's all pseudo science, as the scientists (the Russian Kola Superdeep Borehole project ) could only drill into the earth's crust for 7.6 miles which is 12.2 kilometers? Meaning they don't know what the inside of the earth is made of.). I don't think someone can excavate such amounts of earth, the size of a city.

I also don't think people and plants could live in artificial light. I've seen plants die when they are put in artificial light for too long,and get sick if they don't have fresh air. People need vitamin D from the sun.

On Wikipedia it says it's been 3 years since the event, but I don't remember seeing that written anywhere when watching the series.

When they said the people were handpicked to be in the bunker, I thought they tried to find the best, most lovable, empathic people ever, but in truth, Sinatra brought in the the people she needed to uphold the status she had above ground. Some of them are evil psychopaths.

Agent Collins hated the president for not being able to bring his wife to the bunker, but it was all on her. She knew what was happening,unlike other people who worked for the president but didn't have clearance, but she brushed it off. They have no one to blame for their actions but themselves.

The actors were great. I liked how Julianne Nicholson played when her character lost her child; Nicole Brydon Bloom who plays Jane, has to play her with the facade on, when she's pretending to be meek, scared, shy, and the real her, a ruthless k1ller; Gerald McRaney who played the president's father had a degenerative disease; Jon Beavers who plays Billy, again, that is a complex character, with one face for the world, and another, real face; the actor who played agent Collins' father ,who's character had Parkinsons'.. even Sterling K. Brown had to cry.. everybody was great.

The soundtrack was good.

The series received positive reviews, and quite a few awards nominations, including for Primetime Emmy Awards (for Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actor for Sterling K. Brown, Outstanding Supporting Actor, for James Marsden and Julianne Nicholson).

The 2nd season will premiere on the 23d of February 2026.

The series are a Hulu production, and streams on the platform, and internationally on Disney+.

Rating : Worth a watch !