WHAT IT'S ABOUT Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) is a Secret Service agent tasked with protecting President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) while he's in office, and afterward —

Dan Fogelman created the eight-episode drama, which co-stars James Marsden and Julianne Nicholson and isn't exactly the series it initially seems to be.

Now Fogelman is back with Hulu’s Paradise, a political thriller that shares nothing in common with This Is Us except its star, Sterling K. Brown, and its own mind-rattling revelation in the opening hour.

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.