John Requa

In Paradise (2025), Sterling K. Brown gives us a reason to follow a mystery through some improbable turns. We were moved by his performance because he makes the feelings believable when the plotting is harder to accept. That is a useful starting point for John Requa, one of the series’ directors: his work repeatedly gives actors room within stories that depend on misdirection.

Requa’s work is inseparable from that of Glenn Ficarra, his writing and directing partner. They wrote Bad Santa (2003) before making their feature directing debut with I Love You Phillip Morris (2009), which combines comedy and drama in a story of cons and identity. The ensemble romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) followed, then the con-artist caper Focus (2015). The subjects change, but their interest in liars and people deceiving themselves persists. In Focus, the storytelling becomes more conventional once the premise is established.

They storyboard extensively, encourage improvisation within scripted scenes and use multiple takes to find a natural chemistry between actors, an approach that serves Crazy, Stupid, Love. well. Their later move towards television made sense for directors interested in staying close to characters. Requa directed the pilot and multiple episodes of This Is Us (2016), helping establish its intimate visual style. The handheld camerawork favoured by the partnership lets us feel we have dropped in on people’s lives, and gives the actors space to make an impression without a big speech.

Paradise also makes the limits of that approach clear. Its mystery holds our attention, but the second season asks for more patience with loose plotting and flashbacks. These are weaknesses in the series, not faults we can simply assign to Requa, though they do show how much his kind of actor-centred work depends on the writing around it. Try Paradise if a character-led mystery is your sort of evening; accept that the plotting will occasionally need forgiving.