Paratiisi

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.

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.

Halfway through the second season episodes, starting with episode 4, the subtitles for both Spanish and Finnish disappeared so not speaking either language it makes it really hard to figure out what's happening in the show. I thought it was a problem on my end but my close captioning and subtitles were exactly as they always were before. I have the same issue while watching on my phone as well. Has anyone else come across this issue? I really like this show so I'm hoping this is only a temporary issue that will resolve itself in coming episodes. Great cast, good story and who knew there was an expat Finnish community in the Costa Del Sol region of spain?

The show would've been a lot more enjoyable if the English subtitles weren't so incredibly bad. Terrible grammar, really awkward phrasing and badly chosen vocabulary made them excruciating to read.

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.