Emmy-winner and Oscar-nominee, Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us and The People v. O. J. Simpson) stars as Xavier Collins, a Secret Service agent who has been assigned as the personal bodyguard to the President of the United States. He's very muscular and is in peak physical fitness. He's also very observant, which makes him very good at his job. The only problem is that he doesn't like the current President. He understands that the President is young, handsome and can be very charming when he's not occasionally being insensitive, including racially insensitive, but the President did something that made Xavier not like him and even hate the President.
However, an incident occurs that puts the government in danger. At one point, during the first episode, it felt like this series might become an episodic version of Olympus Has Fallen (2013), that Secret Service actioner, starring Gerard Butler. Arguably, an episodic version of that 2013 hit has already been made, that of Paris Has Fallen (2024). Yet, quickly, it's revealed that that's not the case. There isn't action to be found here. Dan Fogelman created this series. Fogelman is the man behind This Is Us (2016) and Only Murders in the Building (2021), and elements of those two shows are present here.
James Marsden (Sonic the Hedgehog and X-Men) co-stars as Cal Bradford, the President of the United States. If you know anything about This Is Us, then you know that the character of Jack Pearson is this larger-than-life person who is only seen in flashbacks because it's revealed that in the present, Jack Pearson is dead. A large chunk of the early seasons of This Is Us were unraveling the mystery of how Jack died. Needless to say, Cal Bradford is the Jack Pearson of this series.
This Is Us wasn't a murder mystery but Only Murders in the Building is a season-long murder mystery. Fogelman seemed to enjoy working on that series, which focuses on people whose investigations are limited to one location, namely the building in which they live. This series has a very similar aspect where Xavier is investigating murders that are limited to what is a confined space. Yet, this series isn't as comedic as that Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez vehicle.
Julianne Nicholson (Mare of Easttown and Ally McBeal) also co-stars as Samantha Redman aka "Sinatra," a woman who is the President's key advisor. She's his key advisor, mainly because she's one of the wealthiest people on Earth. She's essentially an Elon Musk type. The series gives her a bit more depth than what Musk has. She's a mother who has lost her child, which broke her spirit, and drove her to do more to protect humanity in the face of extreme climate change or what she predicts will be a global disaster. Nicholson's character gives Jack Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men (1992), a run for his money with this idea of protecting people in a manner of which they may not approve.
The series seems like it's building to a showdown between Xavier and Sinatra because Xavier certainly doesn't approve of the manner in which Sinatra is providing her protection of humanity. Along the way, it's introducing us to the world in which has been created. So far, it's been doing that same thing that This Is Us and ABC's Lost (2004) did by giving us flashbacks of various characters, doing mini-character studies that have been compelling.
Driving these character-studies is the greater murder mystery. Now, there have been a ton of confined murder mystery stories. There was even one a couple of years ago that came to mind, that of FX's A Murder at the End of the World (2023). That series didn't give us weepy character-studies to make us care that much about the characters. Fogelman perfected those kinds of weepy stories on This Is Us, so he wields it effectively here.
Rated TV-MA-LV.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 6 eps.
Available on Hulu.