Paratiisi

I was so pleased to see this series back for a second season, which I have just finished watching. All the old characters were back and a completely new storyline.

Fortunately, I was watching a version subtitled into English for all three languages used. On the face of things, it seemed an odd combination to have Finland and Spain in the same series yet it worked. But the Costa del Sol is teeming with Finns - three Finnish friends of mine have holiday homes there. We got a glimpse into this community during the two seasons.

Both storylines hooked me in. This was a series to be consumed at a pace to find out what would happen next. And the tension was unbearable sometimes. We knew that one of the main characters was going to be shot at some point but the lead up to it was pretty unbearable. It's a huge cliffhanger, of course. So we are looking forward to season three. I can't wait.

After having watched the Finnish/Spanish production "The Paradise" season 1 several years ago (also known as Paratiisi and Kosta), it was a pleasant surprise to see that a second season was available on Acorn. Season 2 is also set in Costa del Sol, which has a robust Finnish retirement community. As such, the series has influences from northern Europe, southern Europe, as well as nearby Africa. This creates an interesting cultural stew, between its varied criminals and the detectives who track them down.

While the focus of season 1 was middle-aged Finnish detective Hilkka Mantymaki, in the second season, she shares the spotlight with a younger detective, Luisa Salinas, who has fled the grind of Madrid for the greener pastures of Costa del Sol. The plot line, which involves the exploitation of African immigrants, was interesting.

I liked season 2, found the characters compelling, and raced through the eight episodes rather quickly. For me, the biggest drawback to the series occurred when the international characters were forced to speak English with one another. When that happened, the Finnish and Spanish accents could become quite dense and mumbling, and sometimes indecipherable. Worse, during English dialogue, all the close captioning would drop out, which was regrettable since at times I found myself straining to understand what was being said! But this was a minor problem; The Paradise, season two, is well worth the watch. While I gave it a 7, it is more like a 7.5.

I am a mono-lingual English speaker who enjoys watching mysteries filmed in other languages by using the English subtitles. But in this confusing mishmash, every time the language changes, the CC text that pops up to inform the viewer that the characters were now "speaking in a foreign language" obscured the very subtitles I needed to see in order to understand! Since these changes were fairly often--1) because the show included scenes in Finland as well as in Spain, and 2) because many scenes involved the Finnish community in Spain--this distraction occurred often enough to obliterate my possible comprehension!

Not bad Finnish-Spanish cooperation at all, with intertwining relations between several Finns and Spaniards... No fierce action and even the Spanish side is "calmer" than usual - evidently the Finnish influence :)

The script is also OK, I did not guess the wrongdoer, but the performances are not too memorable, I presume with B-grade performers as I am unable to recall any of the actors-actresses involved here from some other series. There are some excessive storylines and characters decelerating and confusing the general pace, but they are not annoying; the only thing I can consider annoying is listening to the English spoken by the Finns - their constant non-use of sibilants is so contrastive :)

But in general, as mentioned, rather good, definitely no waste of time.

Paratiisi is fun to watch. It is something as rare as a crimer series that feels contemporary. It is a trilingual series (Spanish, English, Finnish) with a lot of border crossing cooperation and people. The actors actually feel like normal people. Some will like that, others will not. Most of the series takes place in southern Spain, in the interplay between expat community and police in the city of Fuengirola.

The actual story is a rather unoriginal murder plot taking many turns. Not all the turns feel reaslitic and the end is not the best. The police investigators are far from superstars, even less than glamorous. There is also some added, seemingly redundant, storyline concerning dementia. Still the overall impression is Paratiisi is a solid 8x45 min piece crime series fitting well with the modern world.