Season 2 of The Paradise (Paratiisi) features the same 3 Finnish and Spanish cops we met in season 1. They’re on to a new case that involves both countries and again need to provide help for each other.
The Paradise (Paratiisi) begins in Finland with Hilkka (Riitta Havukainen) trying to lead a quiet, normal life with a new man. The young Spanish officer Luisa (María Romero) contacts her when a body is found. Hikka heads for Costa del Sol once again to help out.
Soon Andrés (Fran Perea), who was also in Finland with his adopted daughter gets called back to Spain to work on the case.
It takes a couple of episodes and more dead bodies to figure out exactly what’s happening. All the bodies have organs removed. It turns out to be an illegal organ transplant operation.
The criminals go into refugee camps and gather up people they think no one will miss. They hold them until a “client” desperate for an organ transplant appears with plenty of cash in hand. Then a disgraced doctor and a single nurse operate on the healthy person – who may or may not be a match for the recipient – and put the organ in the paying customer’s body. This is done in a makeshift clinic with no staff and no backup if someone dies. And people die frequently.
The story was complicated with many subplots and characters who were involved in one way or another in the organ trading scheme. There were couriers and transportation people, there were realtors renting out unused spaces, there were former doctors, and many refugees. One main subplot was a father trying to save his dying son with a new liver.
The three cops each had personal stories adding subplots to the action as well. We finally got to learn more about Luisa, which I had been waiting for.
The dialog was in Finnish and Spanish, which was great because it had subtitles. There was also a lot of English, but it wasn’t captioned. I only got about half of the English so sometimes I had trouble following the action.
Even if I had understood every word, I wouldn’t have thought season 2 of this police drama was as good as season 1. The crime story didn’t work as well or make as much sense. I thought it was over-complicated and didn’t hang together gracefully.
The personal stories of the main characters showed growth, however. There was a cliffhanger involving Andrés at the very last moment of the final episode, which makes me think there may be a season 3 in the works.
Most of the episodes in The Paradise were directed by Marja Pyykkö. She also worked on season 1. The series is streaming on Acorn TV.
I’m an American viewer and love this show. However in season 2 episode 4 the English subtitles disappeared when characters were speaking Spanish or Finnish. They were only present when characters were speaking English. I don’t need them for English. Very, very frustrating as I want to finish season 2. I watch through Amazon Prime and they told me it’s a problem with the content provider and they can’t fix it. Why would you take away the English subtitles in the middle of season 2. Please fix this.
I agree. I often have the same problem with shows that are in multiple languages. They assume you will understand the English without help. Not me, I have to have close captions on all the time, even with English. It’s in my default settings so most films and shows show me subtitles automatically. It’s really infuriating when they skip the English subtitles.
After reading this review, I watched Season 2. Wow, I could not disagree with you more. I found Season 2 far more compelling, well-written and well-shot than Season 1, though I liked Season 1 quite a bit. Though it followed the quick-cut style of the first season, the switches were easy to follow and also cleverly done. The tension was greater, and the victims were allowed to build empathy from the audience rather than being rather cardboard characters as in Season 1. Season 1 was very good; Season 2 was excellent and worthy of awards.
Thanks for sharing your comments. I appreciate your perspective