I’m Obsessed With Sterling K. Brown’s Paradise, And Episode 1 Dropped Early On Two Streaming Services

My wife and I don’t watch a ton of television. Usually, we’ll wait to hear if a show is any good before we dive in, because we’ve wasted time on shows that are slow to develop, or end up going nowhere before being canceled. This is why we haven’t started Severance yet (though reactions to Season 2 have moved the show up our Must Watch list), and were late to hit programs such as Only Murders in the Building, Hacks, Shogun, and the brilliant The Bear, which we binged in a weekend ahead of The Bear Season 3. That show’s incredible. But for work-related responsibilities, I had to check out Dan Fogelman’s upcoming series Paradise, available on Hulu, and friends? This has become my new obsession… and it can be yours starting right now!

Paradise reunites Dan Fogelman with his award-winning This is Us star Sterling K. Brown for a completely different experiment that’s equally tense, emotional, and character-driven at its core. Brown plays Xavier Collins, lead Secret Service security agent for the U.S. President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) during a cataclysmic event. But in the opening moments of Paradise Episode 1, titled “Wildcat Is Down,” Collins discovers that the President has been murdered in the Oval Office, and is tasked with figuring out who might have been able to pull off such a feat.

Now, the good news. Paradise was meant to drop its first three episodes on Tuesday, January 28. But based on the overwhelmingly positive early reviews, the first episode was posted to both Hulu and Disney+, meaning you can start watching it now as long as you have a subscription. I would advise you to press play as soon as physically possible, because Paradise is the best show on streaming at the moment, and the season only gets better and better as it unfolds.

I rewatched Paradise Episode 1 before writing this, so as not to reveal anything too delicious in this reaction piece. Similar to This Is Us, Paradise skips around the timeline to tell stories of its characters at different points of their lives. Especially President Cal Bradford, who is killed in the opener, though Marsden gets plenty of material in which to sink his teeth as Paradise explains who killed Bradford, and why. And again, like This Is Us, you stay with the story because you quickly grow to love the characters. Dan Fogelman wrote Paradise Episode 1, and co-wrote Episode 2. There is a lot of world-building happening in these early stories, with a lot of it focused on Collins and Bradford’s relationship. But when I tell you that Episode 1 is merely the tip of this iceberg, you are going to have to trust me until Episodes 2 and 3 arrive on January 28.

It’s hard to tell you why I love Paradise without giving away specific details. So I’ll leave you with this. The eight-episode season never loses steam on its magnificent writing, keeping a tight grip on a very taut premise. It features career-best work by Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden – who evolves in ways you can not expect as the season goes on. And while this is a terrible thing to tease, because you will have to wait to see what I mean, remember this when I tell you that Paradise Episode 7, “The Day,” is one of the greatest episodes of television I have ever seen.

It’s that good.

If you have Hulu or Disney+, watch Paradise Episode 1 as soon as you can. Get on board with this show early, because it’s all people will be talking about in a few weeks, when the mesmerizing plot starts to unfold.