Getting a television show produced is no simple feat. Even with a compelling concept and well-crafted scripts, networks and streaming platforms demand answers to numerous questions: production costs, target demographics, the ability to condense the premise into a catchy one-liner, and the potential for multiple seasons to recoup investment. Few are willing to gamble on eccentric passion projects that might fail financially.
Yet Apple TV appears to defy these conventions, frequently commissioning shows that tick none of these boxes. Considering quality per dollar—setting aside Netflix's overwhelming volume—Apple TV may be the premier streaming service, having taken risks that paid off with hits like Severance, Ted Lasso, Slow Horses, The Studio, For All Mankind, and Widow's Bay. However, it also nurtures a collection of quirky charmers that succeed in a meandering fashion—recent examples include Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed and Margo's Got Money Troubles—alongside baffling misfires such as Government Cheese and Hello Tomorrow!, which appeared, bewildered audiences, and vanished. With each new Apple series, the outcome is unpredictable, but it is likely something no other platform would approve—and often, their judgment is correct.
Among these offerings, hovering just above the failures, is Sugar, starring Colin Farrell as Los Angeles private investigator John Sugar. In its first season, Sugar investigated the disappearance of a young woman, uncovering connections between her family and various criminals. The show maintained an air of detached melancholy, enhanced by Farrell's wistful voiceover and frequent nods to its obvious inspiration: film noir.
Beyond employing low-angle or tilted cameras and portraying Los Angeles as a city of desperate loners, Sugar incorporated clips from classic noirs and other aesthetically similar black-and-white films, displayed on the protagonist's television or spliced directly into the action. Farrell's private eye subscribes to American Cinematographer magazine and drives a classic 1960s Corvette. This might seem like an indulgence for old-school cinephiles, but three-quarters through the season, the show casually revealed that—spoiler alert, though less shocking than expected—John Sugar is an alien concealing his true bright blue form while posing as a handsome human in impeccably tailored suits.
Now, two years later, with eyebrows still not fully lowered, we rejoin Farrell for season two. The extraterrestrial element is pushed to the periphery, with a brief catch-up establishing that John Sugar is back in Tinseltown, alone and vaguely troubled by his missing sister. He remains dedicated to taking on hopeless cases ignored by other investigators, such as the disappearance of a Korean boxer's feckless brother.
We travel to the seedy, forgotten corners of the city, where the show's fetish for distressed urban beauty is as pronounced as ever. It revels in peeling paint on a closed shopfront or a wide road at dusk cutting through a chaotic mix of concrete between low-rise neighborhoods. Sugar cruises this landscape in his pristine convertible, laconically searching for clues in a pool hall (a clip of Paul Newman in The Hustler plays) and a boxing gym (Humphrey Bogart in The Harder They Fall), before retreating to the nostalgic Hollywood glamour of the five-star hotel he calls home. There, his television shows Ida Lupino in Road House singing One for My Baby, her lit cigarette perched cheekily on the piano.
John Sugar's non-human nature is merely another way he serves as a disconnected observer in a city where everyone is disconnected from each other. But it adds another layer to the show's audiovisual collage: alongside film excerpts, we now cut to soothing shots of cerulean galaxies, while the narration has evolved from cryptic to cosmic. "Everything comes to an end," Farrell muses as nothing notable occurs. "Sooner than you think, sometimes. From the side suns on Andromeda to the terramorphs on Paloma, everything dies." Bogart never delivered lines like that.
We find ourselves lost in another luxurious Apple labyrinth, but not unhappily so. Every moment of Sugar is visually divine, while the concept of the protagonist's main superpowers being weary kindness and naive sweetness—despite his alien biology granting actual superpowers—continues to bewilder and amuse. Each episode is a half-hour haze suffused with Sugar's sad, sleepy vibe. This show could only exist on Apple—it's another world in there. Sugar is now streaming on Apple TV.
