In this day and age, it can be a tough sell to convince someone to watch a slow-burning detective series on a streamer when there are so many fast-paced programs vying for your attention. I get it; I do. But sometimes a show comes along that breaks free from the preconceived notions that can come with a genre, while also celebrating it. There’s one series, particularly, that comes to mind that ticks those boxes — and it’s currently streaming its second season on Apple TV.
Sugar stars Oscar and Emmy nominee Colin Farrell as private investigator, John Sugar. On the surface, it looks and operates like a modern-day noir detective show, but something supernatural is happening if you look a bit deeper.
I am going to spoil something about the series right now. It needs to be done if I’m going to discuss the new episodes with you. So, if you’re not caught up on season 1, you’ve been warned.
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John Sugar is an alien: a blue extraterrestrial, a bright-eyed being not from this planet. And yep, he still looks better in a suit than I do.
This sci-fi story twist was revealed in 2024, when the show’s first season was brand new. While this creative swing disrupted expectations of the noir genre, it didn’t overshadow the story or the case he was striving to solve in those episodes. It added to it, like icing on a cake that didn’t necessarily need it but benefited from the sweetness nonetheless.
Through the show’s initial run, Sugar was searching for his missing sister, and his need to find her and reconcile that grief fueled his work as a private eye. Season 2 opens by closing that storyline, and follows Sugar, who, after the events of the first season’s finale, is allegedly the only member of his clan left on Earth. Without family or community, Sugar returns to the work that gives him purpose: finding missing people.
His doorway into our culture was movies — old Hollywood black-and-white movies, to be specific — and it’s through that glamorous, dramatic, stylized lens that he sees our world. However, this perception is regularly disrupted by the harsh, violent, brutal realities that accompany his work.
Episode 3 drops on Apple TV on Friday, which means Sugar is still very much focused on this season’s missing person case. The man he’s looking for is Ji (Raymond Lee), the criminal-minded brother of a promising boxer, Danny Moon (Jin Ha). His investigation puts Sugar in all sorts of precarious situations, including gang territory, which pivots the series into familiar turf for those who miss shows like The Shield or The Wire.
This tidbit adds a new layer to the series and is a nice reminder that Los Angeles is an important character in the show. Like another LA-based show, The Lincoln Lawyer, Sugar regularly features sequences in which Farrell is dressed to the nines, driving his classic convertible through the city’s streets, where the landscape toggles from tourist-crowded spectacle to crumbling and disheveled wasteland, and back again, much like it does if you drive around these parts regularly — which I do.
Season 1 introduced the voice-over narrative, with Farrell delivering an inner monologue to inform the story. Stylistically, it’s a common tool used in the detective noir genre and could easily plummet the show into cheeseball territory, but it worked in its first run of episodes and continues to be a nice addition in the new episodes.
That shouldn’t be surprising, considering the caliber of actor delivering these lines.
Colin Farrell is magnetic as John Sugar, who is soft-spoken, calculated and stoic. His performance as the alien private eye is the exact opposite of the work he did as Oz Cobb in The Penguin, where he disappeared in the role of the brash, boisterous Gotham City crime boss through heavy prosthetics.
His voice-over segments, accompanied by classic film clips featuring a lot of Humphrey Bogart, guide the emotional journey Sugar is on. He’s far from being a human, but he can’t get enough of humanity. The camera work, filled with Dutch angles and other stylistic elements, helps inform the series and pay tribute to the noir genre while also solidifying the notion that John Sugar is a strange man, stuck living a solitary life in a rather strange land.
Heck, I would go so far as to say that John Sugar is kind of how I’d imagine Clark Kent could’ve turned out, if he remained an outcast, fell in love with movies and never decided to put on the Superman costume to share his powers with the world.
Farrell’s Sugar is always watching, observing, fascinated with the people around him. He’s a rudderless being still searching for purpose. So, he works to find humans — which, I suppose, means there’s a conversation that can be had here about how cinema benefits and connects humanity, but I digress.
Yes, Farrell is the No. 1 reason you should give the show a watch. But the supporting cast is worth your time, too. Shea Whigham’s turn as Sugar’s Big Lebowski-style mentor, Tom, adds a similar energy to Elliott Gould’s in The Lincoln Lawyer. Laura Donnelly’s femme fatale, Charlotte, keeps Sugar on his toes. Sasha Calle brings street smarts as his new assistant, Val, and the always superb Tony Dalton, who is this season’s big bad, Ray Vega, does unnerving work without chewing the scenery.
Trust me, scenery could easily be chewed here, and it’s all so delectible to take in, I assure you. Sugar is a science fiction series that would still fire on all dramatic cylinders if it were solely a brooding detective story. It’s all so good from the writing and cinematography to the steadily increasing emotional stakes and nuanced performances of its cast.
But it has that supernatural DNA, to be sure. And that makes it another unique, intriguing, must-watch entry in Apple TV’s lineup.
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