Season 1 - 8 episodes (2025)
Watch the trailer
Created by: Dan Fogelman
Starring: Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson, Sarah Shahi, Nicole Brydon Bloom, Aliyah Mastin, Percy Daggs IV, James Marsden
Rated: TV-MA
Plot
Secret Service agent Xavier Collins investigates the murder of President Cal Bradford in a seemingly idyllic, yet secretive, underground city in Colorado, three years after a doomsday event.
Verdict
A unique setting and thus complex challenges help distinguish this from typical mystery shows. Each episode splits present and past to develop the story and to continue twisting the plot. This does a good job of providing plenty of surprises while still doing a nice job of tying everything together. I do wish this explored the concept of the perfect underground city and the socio-economics of the world. Unfortunately the setting exists just to draw interest. Past that, it's a typical murder mystery.
It depends.
Review
The first episode's big reveal is that we're not in Washington D.C., we're under the Colorado mountains. I get why the show wants to do a big reveal, but that needs to be up front as it's the reason I started watching the series.
Secret Service agent Collins (Sterling K. Brown) finds President Bradford (James Marsden) dead. Bradford selected Collins years ago and they became friends, but something happened in the meantime that has angered Collins. Despite that, Collins is dedicated to his job and wants to the find the killer. We're provided several clues with the big question being why did the country have to move underground.
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| Sterling K. Brown plays Xavier Collins |
Every episode switches between past and present to develop the characters and show us how the bunker came to be. It's through that we learn why there's discord between Bradford and Collins.
This is the first murder to occur in this underground city. Collins is interviewed about it due to his animosity and the psychologist, Torabi (Sarah Shahi), tells him to say yes, he is glad the President died. She's also the one that chose Collins to lead the Secret Service detail and who made the cut to enter the bunker. The President gave her a message for Collins if something happened.
Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) runs the bunker and was the richest woman in the world before everyone went underground. She's the obvious suspect in the crime, though I wondered if that was just a red herring. It seems too easy that she's a megalomaniac that wants to control everything. An exploration team was sent to the surface years ago, but they never returned. Questions about that now arise amidst all the other questions. Sinatra seems like the culprit for both, and that early in the season makes it too easy.
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| James Marsden plays President Cal Bradford |
Bradford discovers what happened to the exploration team, and we initially think that's why he was killed. Along the way we learn about how this bunker was built. Bradford's father was rich and used his connections to help the build as well as push Bradford into politics for his own benefit.
Episode seven shows the extinction level event. I didn't think we'd see it, but within context it's plausible.
The final episode does a good job of tying everything together where the answers don't feel like a trick or pulled from left field. It fits well. It's not a bad season, but it's basically a murder mystery. This manages to set itself apart by being set in an underground bunker due to an extinction level event. This does leave it open for a second season, but I don't know what this would do with another season. It can't do the murder mystery again and trying to expand the story and leave the bunker will likely weaken the presentation.
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