At a time of such global instability, it’s no surprise paranoid thrillers are flourishing on TV. The climate is right for stories shaped by fear and mistrust.
Their plots typically involve the machinations of unseen, dark and powerful organisations. The protagonists might stumble across a piece of information: a message, a code, a theory. Maybe it happens while they’re at work, or perhaps they’re just going about their daily lives. But they trigger a lethal response and soon people are dying in suspicious circumstances. And the embattled heroes must try to outwit, and sometimes simply outrun, a shadowy force that appears omnipresent and hard to identify.
James Marsden plays the US president in paranoid thriller Paradise.
These thrillers establish a potent atmosphere of unease and a world where it’s impossible to know whom to trust. There’s invariably an urgency: the clock’s ticking on a struggle to survive or to find out who’s in pursuit. And the sense of being watched is unshakable: surveillance is everywhere and movements, phone calls and interactions are constantly observed. Today, with the prevalence of smartphones, dashcams and CCTV cameras, it’s virtually a norm. What was once a fantasy, a grimly imagined future of Big Brother and a brave new world, has in many ways become our reality.
A number of recent series offer these scenarios, in addition to compelling protagonists played by charismatic actors. The trend recalls a golden period in the ’70s, with celebrated American movies such as The Conversation, The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, Chinatown and All the President’s Men.
Today, streamers have found this style of thriller topical and ideally suited to their needs. The twisty plots, packed with shock revelations, provide handy cliffhangers to keep viewers hooked. And, the series accommodate something more than a single-season success: encore rounds can be set up by resolving one key plot line by the end of the first season but leaving other threads enticingly dangling.
These four series offer something more than a suspenseful chase that drives a second-rate production (such as the disappointing return of The Night Agent): they endeavor to say something substantial about the protagonist and their world.
Paradise (Disney+)
Sterling K. Brown plays Secret Service agent Xavier Collins in the Disney+ drama Paradise.
Dan Fogelman, the creator of This is Us, has already demonstrated his talent for developing inventive and absorbing intimate dramas, but here he ventures into different territory. The eight-part series begins by introducing Xavier Collins (the always terrific Sterling K. Brown), a capable and dedicated secret-service agent assigned to protect the US president (James Marsden). He’s also the devoted dad of two children, with the fate of their mother emerging in flashback as the drama unfolds.
This is definitely a series where the less you know about the plot, the better. However, a murder on Xavier’s watch casts suspicion on the highest levels of government and a zinger of a twist closes the first episode. Among the series’ qualities are a well-chosen cast, including Marsden as a Kennedy-esque POTUS and Julianne Nicolson as an icily controlling powerbroker nicknamed Sinatra.
Julianne Nicholson plays an icy powerbroker in Paradise.
The penultimate episode, which details key developments that have been discussed but not previously depicted, is simply stunning in its propulsive, confidently choreographed energy.
Alongside the murder mystery, Fogelman’s series ponders what we’re prepared to sacrifice to have a comfortable life. Its evocation of an orderly suburban landscape suggests a version of the American dream: inviting houses, tidy lawns, spotless streets. But, as with a range of comparable screen representations – think of anything from David Lynch’s work to Desperate Housewives – all is not as it seems, and when this apparently orderly world is suddenly rocked by violence, the cracks emerge.
Prime Target (Apple TV+)
Leo Woodall stars as a maths prodigy in the British thriller Prime Target.
This eight-part thriller poses the intriguing question of whether scientists and mathematicians can be held responsible for the ways in which their discoveries are deployed.
Gifted mathematician Edward Brooks (Leo Woodall) is obsessed with his study of prime numbers. The specifics of his work at Cambridge University are as understandable as the chess strategies in The Queen’s Gambit, but that really doesn’t matter. What’s important is that we learn Ed’s work has the potential to cause chaos: he could unearth a code that can crack any digital system, a significant threat to a range of entities that come looking for him.
Woodall and Quintessa Swindell in Prime Target.
Taylah Sanders (the magnetic Quintessa Swindell), an American government agent, comes to his aid. Their union creates an odd-couple-on-the-run scenario, with Ed as a tunnel-vision academic and Taylah a gutsy tech wiz who can also run like an athlete, shoot with accuracy and hot-wire a car. They’re a dynamic, if perpetually vulnerable, duo.
Zero Day (Netflix)
Robert De Niro as former president George Mullen in Zero Day.
Robert De Niro’s first starring role in a TV series casts him as George Mullen, a respected former US president who is called back into action after the country suffers a devastating cyberattack. The president (Angela Bassett) appoints him to lead a commission investigating the cause of the attack, identify its perpetrators and protect the nation from another one. His unit is given unprecedented powers to arrest, detain and question suspects.
Angela Bassett as President Mitchell in Zero Day.Credit: Netflix
De Niro resembles an ageing lion, a once-esteemed king of the jungle who is now more frail and uncertain of his power. Even though he can summon the leadership qualities required in a time of crisis, series creators Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim and Michael Schmidt weave in doubts about his mental health: George is secretly uncertain about his memory and tormented by nightmarish visions.
Meanwhile, the drama explores how panic and pragmatism can drive a political agenda, and how that fear can be exploited.
The Madness (Netflix)
Colman Domingo as Muncie Daniels and Marsha Stephanie Blake as Elena in The Madness.
Muncie Daniels (Colman Domingo) is confident of his clout. But when the CNN host takes a break from work to write a book at a cabin in the woods, he stumbles into a crime scene. The gruesome discovery turns him into a target and sets off a chain reaction involving the FBI, a white-supremacist organisation and his own family. Creator-writer Stephen Belber gradually strips Daniels of his defences – his job, the safety of his snazzy home –forcing him to rely increasingly on forgotten friends and estranged family members. The storyline involving his personal relationships becomes as relevant to the drama as his efforts to escape the hornet’s nest he’s inadvertently awoken.
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