Deep Dive: Hulu. Vol. 1.

"Paris Has Fallen," "Culprits," "A Thousand Blows," "Hyper Knife." Looking for gems and also the easy yes.

---

Deep Dive is a spoiler-free feature that explores both hidden, often un-promoted (and thus unknown) gems as well as must-watch quality series in the zeitgeist (or those that should be) on different steaming platforms.

---

“Paris Has Fallen.” (2024).

The first question that nobody outside of a few Mid-Minus action fans might ask is this one: “Hey, is this related to the three “Has Fallen” action movies that appeared in 2013, 2016 and 2019?”

And after giving you the side eye and maybe a gold star, the answer is yes, but this is a TV series with different writers and actors and it already has a second season in the works. Even better? It’s Mid-Plus.

“Paris Has Fallen” has all the hallmarks of action-oriented escapist television and, for good measure, was created, or rather re-created (yes, from the dregs of a trio of movies), by Howard Overman, who created and wrote “Misfits” plus wrote on a number of other solid series, many with pulse-pounding tendencies like those found in “Paris Has Fallen,” which is a France-England co-production and has the added benefit of racing madly around Paris locations while guns go off.

“Paris Has Fallen” didn’t air on Hulu in the States until December of 2024 and that explains a lot about its relative invisibleness. But if you’re looking to crest the same mildly high but achievable bar that I set for these kinds of shows — something close to non-stop action and something closer to (rather than further from ) smartly done — then “Paris Has Fallen” succeeds so far (two taut episodes) primarily because it employs as its anti-hero the superb character actor Sean Harris (two “Mission Impossible” movies and “24 Hour Party People,” “The Borgias” and plenty more — he’s a scene stealer of the highest order).

Harris plays Jacob Pearce, a commander in the French Foreign Legion who did the dirty work for the French government and then got burned. But you know what they say about killing an elephant (or tiger, or lion or FFL apex predator) — if you’re going to kill them, you’d better kill them. If they survive, you’ve got nowhere to run.

Ooops.