Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.What to do when you’re no longer the most powerful man in the world? Stay in politics? Take up painting? Mount an improbable comeback? In Paradise, a new eight-part series on Disney+, fictional former US president Cal Bradford (James Marsden) moves from the Oval Office to a bachelor pad in a secluded community where he can lead an idle life of luxury. That is until the morning he is found murdered in his own home in what was supposed to be the most secure, serene place on Earth.The apparent impenetrability and remoteness of the location seems to suggests an inside job; the killer must have had easy access to both the house’s extensive security system and Bradford himself. Someone like his chief bodyguard, Xavier Collins (Sterling K Brown), who once took a bullet for the president but has since had reason to regret doing so.Yet it soon becomes clear that Xavier would also be a convenient fall guy for the town’s cabal of rich and powerful elites to pin an assassination on. And so, as the investigation into him intensifies, Xavier begins his own search for evidence that might implicate the community’s de facto leader: Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson), a steely billionaire with a reputation for doing things her way.As the twisty whodunnit-cum-conspiracy plot plays out in the show’s present, flashbacks tease out background on Xavier and Sinatra’s relationships with the slick Bradford. These glimpses of the past also flesh out the human drama and bring in themes of grief and trauma.That said, the who and the why of the mystery are eclipsed, at least early on, by the where of it all: a defining detail that’s disclosed at the end of an evasive first episode. Without being able to go into specifics, it’s a reveal that turns Paradise into a different show from the one it initially seems to be — more narratively expansive and thematically searching, but also more contrived.Still, what Paradise lacks in originality, it partially compensates for in the talent of its lead. A natural, empathetic actor, Brown manages to make Xavier a believable person — no mean feat given the series’ outlandish premise.★★★☆☆First three episodes on Disney+ in the UK from January 28 and on Hulu in the US. New episodes weekly.
