Paradise (2025 – present)

Incredibly contrived plot. The premise, a major earth destroying event leads to a tiny number of Americans taking refuge in an underground bunker city while everyone else just dies. Cool. But given that the architects were planning for this world ending scenario, why not multiple bunkers? Why not migrate people to live there well before shit hits the fan? And why have a president of a population of 25,000? I mean, billionaires basically rule this new city/world, so why even pretend to hold onto the old institutions? I genuinely hate myself for making it through to the end of the first season, only doing so by pure stubbornness. Just got dumber and dumber.

"Paradise": the nearest point of comparison is "Silo." A similar tale set at the end of the world that sees 25000 survivors live in an underground town that mimics the ruined world they left behind. This is in many ways a political thriller first and foremost, where the powerbrokers of this small society vie ruthlessly to control the alleged paradise they have constructed for themselves. Whilst this series strives to provide an intelligently rendered tale, backed by high quality acting, wokeism gets in the way. This reviewer was left with the compelling feeling that successful "white people" are deemed responsible for all the world's woes, from food inequality to climate change and many other bad things that befall humanity. Equally I didn't think much of the glorification of the office of the US Presidency. As we are seeing now with the war in Iran its nothing like its depicted here and elsewhere in entertainment. It's not an accurate or terribly sophisticated assessment, in my view, of the human condition, in either instance and it slowly eroded my interest in this series. In summary, an interesting premise, a reasonable thriller, but let down, in my estimation, by the compulsion to lecture. Watchable but not of the same standing as "Silo."