Paradise proves that – in fiction – it's more fun to watch US Presidents be bad
James Marsden plays the US President in a new Disney+ drama, but how does he measure up to some of TV's greatest Commanders in Chief?
A word of warning to all my fellow West Wing-nuts: don’t go watching Disney+’s flashy new Washington-based drama Paradise expecting a fresh version of Aaron Sorkin’s walking-talking White House jewel.
Yes, it has Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K Brown) up close and personal with US President Cal Bradford (James Marsden), but without giving too much away, the show quickly moves away from the elegant porticos of the White House to somewhere... Well, let’s just say nowhere near Pennsylvania Avenue.
Bradford, whom we meet mostly in flashback, is part JFK, part Bill Clinton. Charismatic, compassionate and reassuringly human, he confides in an unimpressed Collins, “I drink whiskey in the Oval Office, I couldn’t tell you who the eighth vice-president was, and I’m not sure where Syria is on a map.” Could he also have an eye for the ladies? Well, he admits the First Lady “voted for the other guy”.
Thus Bradford joins the canon of small-screen US commanders in chief through whom we get to explore what absolute power does to a man (or occasionally woman), their political brilliance and personal flaws both illuminated by the responsibility of the role.
The idea of a small man on a big stage – what Sorkin called “stories about kings and palaces” – has long been irresistible to writers and the paradox remains cartoonishly delightful (in fiction at least).
In Shonda Rhimes’s Scandal, Kerry Washington’s crisis-management supremo Olivia Pope spends her time trying to dig President Fitzgerald Grant (a name clearly cobbled from the history books) out of a hole. Because, sure enough, he comes with an Ivy League degree, military service, the perfect family… and a bunch of mistresses.
His main squeeze (Pope herself, naturally) squeals at him, “You are the leader of the free world. I wanted you to be a better man, the man I campaigned for,” before she succumbs to his embrace. Power sells.
But Grant is small hash browns compared with the malevolence revealed by President Francis Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey in Netflix’s House of Cards. Writer Beau Willimon said of his shameless creation, “There’s always the danger in politics that power can corrupt.” But on TV it can also serve up all the best lines, as when Underwood broke the fourth wall to confide his world view to thrilled viewers, “The road to power is paved with hypocrisy and casualties. Never regret.”
There are nobler TV presidents for sure, but with less juice to squeeze out of these wholesome characters, writers opt to move them slightly to the left (in every way) and focus instead on other figures in their orbit.
African-American actor Dennis Haysbert was so popular as President David Palmer in 24, it’s said he helped pave the way for Barack Obama, but the show belonged to Kiefer Sutherland’s counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer. The peerless Jed Bartlet was only meant to be a secondary character in The West Wing, until Martin Sheen began stealing every scene.
I interviewed Sheen once and asked him what he would do if he were really in charge for a day. “It would never happen,” he said. “I’d be outside getting arrested with other protesters.”
There goes a rare man who knows how to avoid being bad without being boring. For the most part, though, Willimon got it right when he explained why he chose to concentrate on the darker side of these powerful characters: “That’s more fun to watch and also serves as a cautionary tale.”
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Paradise is streaming weekly on Disney+, the first three episodes are available to stream now. You can sign up to Disney+ from £4.99 a month now.
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