Hulu’s Paradise, currently wrapping up a fine second season after an Emmy-nominated first, is the most spoilable show on TV. Try as he might, even the conscientious critic can’t avoid untying its frilliest bow. For about 45 minutes, creator Dan Fogelman’s (This Is Us) latest effort appears to be a standard-issue political thriller, varieties of which appear on streaming services almost weekly. But look up. Isn’t there something strange about that wan, insubstantial sky? 

As its pilot episode eventually reveals, Paradise is set not in the world we know but in a postapocalyptic future. Driven underground by an Antarctic supervolcano and tsunami, 25,000 Americans have fashioned a new kind of city, one powered by nuclear reactors and lit with a massive artificial sun. U.S. President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) has survived but spends his days as a backslapping mascot, real authority having settled elsewhere. Nevertheless, Cal has enemies. When, in episode one, Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) finds the president’s dead body, he must solve a crime that threatens to shake the city to its subterranean core.