The Paradise Season 1 Recaps

Welcome to the next installment in our recap series that takes us back through the first season of The Paradise before Series 2 begins this Fall!

Previously, on The Paradise: Katherine heads The Paradise to go wedding shopping, dragging along a bunch of her friends so she can help make the store some more money using her social influence. She causes a run on a gastly shade of fabric by tricking the intellectually challenged townsfolk into thinking a person like Katherine would ever get married in “midnight ink”. Meanwhile, across the road in our Singular Shopping Area, Denise brokers a short-lived agreement between the five other shop keeper’s to sell their wares as package deals. Katherine dislikes Moray’s obsession with his dead wife, but runs afoul of creepy Jonas when she attempts to remove the giant Mrs. Moray portrait from his office and the two are now mortal enemies. Denise and Moray take a walk and have a long heart to heart together, though unbeknownst to them, they’re spotted by Lord Glendening.

We’ve finally made it to the Series 1 finale! (Just in time to start Series 2 this weekend but whatever, that’s next week.) What does the Nameless City’s One Shopping Area have in store for us this week? Onward, and let’s find out.

Welcome to the next installment in our recap series that takes us back through the first season of The Paradise before Series 2 begins this Fall!

Previously, on The Paradise: The Paradise adds a counter selling birds (yes, really) and of course Pauline loses one and of course that’s an actual storyline. Moray and Katherine get engaged because of course the secret to a happy relationship is a couple wherein one is disinterested and one is a masochist. Denise confesses to Miss Audrey that she’s in love with Moray because I guess she must really like close talking. She eventually confesses the same to Moray and they kiss and the music swells triumphantly only five minutes later she finds out about his engagement and that’s awkward. Creepy Mr. Jonas tricks Denise’s Uncle Edmund into punching him in the face, we hear way too much (again) about how perfect Moray’s dead wife was, and Denise quits The Paradise because she can’t face being around Moray now. But that’s okay, in a way, because now she’s going to get to try all her wackiest entrepreneurial schemes over at her uncle’s failing dress shop and surely that’s going to go well.

Let’s see what happens next, shall we?

Welcome to the next installment in our recap series that takes us back through the first season of The Paradise before Series 2 begins this Fall!

Previously, on The Paradise: Moray is considering how best to handle his planned expansion of The Paradise when one of the neighboring shop owners won’t sell. He manages to convince him by making him a junior partner in the shop, but everyone ends up hating him and wants him out. But everything’s okay because it turns out that Creepy Jonas probably just murdered him anyway. Katherine and Moray get back together sort of I guess after she makes a spectacle of herself shopping at a bunch of other stores. (No really, that happened – oh no, not store adultery!) Denise has a failed entrepreneurial idea, which she then redeems thanks to her standard creative brilliance, and Moray remains impressed with her.

What can we expect in Episode 6? Well, since we have already had murder, it would seem anything at all is fair game. Let’s see what happens, shall we?

Welcome to the next installment in our recap series that takes us back through the first season of The Paradise before Series 2 begins this Fall!

Previously, on The Paradise: Miss Audrey has a midlife crisis because she’s getting older and everyone can see that Moray has a thing for Denise and her constant promotional ideas. She actually makes herself ill about it and, as a result, Denise gets to run ladies’ wear for a bit and show off all her sales talents. (Of course she does a great job, because hello, have you seen this show.) Katherine and Dreamy Peter Adler go on dates and are adorable together, but since everyone on the show can’t shut up about her thing with Moray – including Dudley, who shows up at her house specifically to tell her that his boss might stoop to get with her if she tried again because he has the sads – they break up by the end of the episode. I hate everything. Clara tries to sleep with Moray again, we learn more about Edmund’s past with Miss Audrey, and this is probably the only episode where you actually legitimately thought Lord Glendening was awesome.

So, onward, then, I guess. Let’s see what happens next.

Welcome to the next installment in our recap series that takes us back through the first season of The Paradise before Series 2 begins this Fall!

Previously, on The Paradise: The gang legitimately finds a baby in The Paradise and I hope you didn’t want to find out who it belonged to at any point in this episode because you won’t. Moray uses the abandoned child for advertising purposes, because of course he does, while Arthur has an identity crisis about not being the only Paradise-born kid anymore and Clara has several rage-related meltdowns because it turns out that she had a daughter that’s being kept on board at the local orphanage. Katherine and Peter Adler, the guy who runs the orphanage hit it off, because he is perfect and dreamy. Denise has another brilliant entrepreneurial idea which she pitches to Moray via Katherine, because she has to hide her light under a bushel since Miss Audrey’s forbidden her from having ideas. Moray is angry she went behind his back because I don’t know, it sort of makes no sense. And Clara finally, tearfully decides to let her daughter be adopted out of the orphanage because she can’t give her a good life as an unmarried shopgirl I guess.

So, what can we expect this week? Who even knows. Let’s see, shall we?

Welcome to the next installment in our recap series that takes us back through the first season of The Paradise before Series 2 begins this Fall!

Previously, on The Paradise: The most boring episode in the world happens. The Paradise hosts a contest to name “Miss Paradise Pink” as a gimmick to get people in the store. We meet Katherine’s boring friend Jocelyn who, in the course of one episode manages to falsely accuse shop assistant Sam of assault, confess that she’s left her husband, and spend a lot of money on credit in the store. This all comes to nothing when her bill is settle, Sam is vindicated and Jocelyn is apparently sent back home to her oafish husband so I’m glad we wasted an hour on that. Anyway, Denise and Moray also stare at each other some more, and have another scene where they talk whilst standing exceptionally close together. Denise also gets to show off her business sense by figuring out exactly how the Paradise Pink competition should work.

In short: There’s nowhere to go but up in this episode right? Let’s get to it

Previously, on The Paradise: Country girl Denise arrives in…some town that I don’t think they’ve named to seek fortune and a better life in the big city (or possibly a medium or small city - it’s unclear as they seem to only have this one street on the show). She gets a job at a posh department store modestly named The Paradise catches the eye of its owner, a dreamy, slightly smarmy dude named Moray who has A Big Vision for the future of the store. Moray also has some deep dark secret about his dead wife, a fairly horrible girlfriend (Katherine) and a staff bursting with the inept (Pauline), the forgettable (STILL don’t know his right-hand assistant’s name), the cruel (Clara) and the downright creepy (Jonas). How will she survive?

Let's find out, shall we?

Now that we know US viewers are finally going to get to see the second season of the popular, lavish period drama The Paradise for themselves – and we know that so many of YOU all out there love it – it’ll be joining the recap lineup here at Telly Visions later this Fall.

However, that would also be about the time that I realized that if I’m going to recap the new season, I need a refresher on the old one. And I bet some of you do too! So, welcome to another installment of our Retrospective Recap Series – because we’re gonna do Series 1 of The Paradise here on the blog over the next few weeks. I hope some of you out there love it (or me?) enough to stick around and chat about it. If you too need a refresher, or would like to watch along with me, the entire first season can be streamed online via both Netflix and Amazon Instant Video (though, sadly, not the Prime service).

On with the show, shall we? Let’s get to chatting about The Paradise Season 1, Episode 1. Enjoy!