James Marsden in Paradise, Angela Bassett in Zero Day and Paul Fitzgerald in The Residence

Three New Presidential Dramas

 To Help You Avoid All The Presidential Drama

It’s been really rough, tuning into the news these past several months. All of the presidential drama has made us downsize our daily dose of disaster and instead, eagerly engage in escapist entertainment.

So naturally, my wife and I have latched onto three wildly entertaining shows that, ahem, focus on pretend presidents. All of the presidential drama has unprecedentedly pushed us toward presidential dramas. Funny how that works.

If you haven’t heard of or seen Paradise, Zero Day or The Residence I envy you. They are great entertainment and I wish I could watch them with fresh eyes all over again. All three of these wonderful new shows have premiered this year — late January, late February and late March, respectively.

The wild thing about each presidential drama is that — for the most part — the president isn’t the most prominently featured character. I suppose you could argue that in Paradise, presidential portrayer James Marsden has a bigger role in flashbacks. Then in descending order, Zero Day’s President Angela Bassett’s role is very secondary to the plot. Then in The Residence, actor Paul Fitzgerald is listed 20th on Town & Country’s Who’s Who Guide To The 25 Cast Members.

The top billed stars are really Sterling K. Brown in Paradise, Robert DeNiro in Zero Day — his first TV series ever — and “Crazy Eyes” from Orange is the New Black’s Uzo Aduba in The Residence.

Sterling K. Brown in Paradise, Robert DeNiro in Zero Day and Uzo Aduba in The Residence Sterling K. Brown in Paradise, Robert DeNiro in Zero Day and Uzo Aduba in The Residence

I don’t want to give too much away about each series. IMDB says about hulu’s Paradise, “A Secret Service agent investigates the murder of a former president in a seemingly peaceful community.” Sterling K. Brown, from This Is Us, is the aforementioned Secret Service agent. We had no idea what was in store for us, but our cousins implored us to watch it. Wow!

Of Netflix’s Zero Day, IMDB writes, “In the midst of crisis: how can we discover the truth when it seems that the world is being destroyed by uncontrollable forces? Also, to what extent are conspiracy theories our own inventions or products of our imagination?” Some of that hits a bit too close to home, eh? But you’ll enjoy Robert DeNiro as the former president, helping out Bassett during the crisis.

Finally, IMDB describes The Residence on Netflix this way, “Inside the White House’s staff residence and the lives workers share with the First Family.” Now, I’m not quite finished yet with this fun and funny series, but THAT description doesn’t even come close to what the show’s about. Okay, I’m going to spoil something here; there’s a murder (and it’s not the president). We know there’s a murder because SNL’s Jane Curtin starts the series out screaming at Giancarlo Esposito’s (Chicken Man from Breaking Bad) corpse. Don’t worry, he shows up later many times — not the body, but the actual character in flashbacks. This is the latest offering from Shonda Rhimes.

You’ve been hearing a lot about other buzzy dramas recently — Severance & White Lotus in particular. But you may not have heard too much about these three West Wing adjacent acts. They won our roll call vote, carrying the House 2-0. No one abstained; all the members showed up with popcorn.

As my wife says, “It’s nice to watch presidential disasters that aren’t real, for once.”

 

Rodney Curtis is a recovering journalist and author of four books.

Check out Rodney’s books here.