Beware that something strange lurks underneath Sugar’s sleek, Los Angeles-set tale of crime and deception. With a creative team comprising sci-fi veterans Mark Protosevich, Simon Kinberg, and Fernando Meirelles – the last best known for the gritty crime drama City of God but also responsible for the plague-of-sense-deprivation thriller Blindness – this ostensible detective noir turns out to be a peculiar exercise in genre-bending. The payoff of this big swing is one of the wildest twists in prestige streaming TV of recent years – but is the high-stake gamble seemingly geared toward landing a second season worth it?
The titular character is the amusingly named John Sugar (Colin Farrell), a take on the quintessential private eye with a heart of gold. He’s first introduced in sleek black and white, finishing a job for the Japanese Yakuza. Sugar doesn’t like hurting people, he tells the audience in the monotonic voiceover that runs throughout the series. What does he like? Finely cut suits, reuniting loved ones, and movies. Especially movies.
He loves cinema so much in fact that the first thing he does upon returning to sunny L.A. is pick up the latest issues of Sight & Sound, Cahiers du Cinema, and American Cinematheque from his handler, Ruby (Kirby). When he finally agrees to carry a gun, it’s the one used by Glenn Ford in The Big Heat. Like Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe, Sugar is fond of the pricey comforts of hotel living and takes up residence in a chic bungalow. His car is a vintage Corvette reminiscent of another famous investigator, hard-boiled Mike Hammer in the classic noir Kiss Me Deadly. So naturally, he can’t resist the opportunity to infiltrate the inner sanctums of Hollywood royalty when producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell) enlists his help to find his missing granddaughter, Olivia (Sydney Chandler).
Ruby advises him not to take the case: You probably should look into this hand tremor, she insists. Have you called the doctor yet, she asks – dots you don’t need a PI’s license to connect. But Olivia reminds Sugar of his sister and unhealing wounds, so he can’t stay away. This grief, carried so close to his chest, is a great part of what makes Farrell’s performance so compelling. The detective, who lives a life drowned by the anguish of an open question, knows that the only thing able to appease this particular kind of pain is an answer. Farrell couples Sugar’s comforting soft-spoken demeanour with the type of inner sorrow that is trickier to convey, his quietness rooted in a deep longing that fuels the mystery at the center of Protosevich’s creation.
Alas, there is a specific artistry to the teasing of a big reveal, and much of it comes from being able to sustain a captivating story leading to the twist. This is where Sugar stumbles, with the secret very quickly limiting the scope of what the series can explore in its introductory season. The stellar cast are hostages to a parade of shallow supporting characters: Emmy winner Anna Gunn appears as the coddling mother to Olivia’s insufferably babyish half-brother, who’s a little too old to act the way he does yet arguably too young to be played by Nate Corddry. Character actor Dennis Boutsikaris rounds out the Siegel clan as Bernie, a frustrated producer doomed to never live up to the glory of his family name.
Boutsikaris and Cromwell make up the most amusing pairing on Sugar. The polished, towering movie legend hovering over his short, frustrated son; the two braving petty insults to cover up the regret caused by truths long known yet never spoken. This kind of insight is unfortunately not extended to characters like Ruby, who ushers Sugar in and out of her house as an anti-oracle – a being not of enlightenment but of concealment. Amy Ryan is similarly given one note to play as rock star-turned-activist (and Olivia’s stepmother) Melanie. She’s initially positioned as a possible love interest, but lacks chemistry with Farrell and isn’t given much of a chance to step outside her quirky-sidekick box.
Meirelles directs five out of the eight episodes (Succession’s Adan Arkin helms the remainder) with a handheld camera style that feels in direct opposition to the noir tone. While the technique creates a sense of dissonance, it proves handy in aiding the contrast between the John Sugar who’s presented to the world and the version the detective works so hard to obscure. Meirelles goes from wide shots of the Sugar driving down LA’s wide open roads in his baby blue Corvette (the apex of visibility) to framing him behind doors, glasses, and lights (physical reminders of his elusiveness).
Clips of classic films like The Night of the Hunter, Vertigo, and Touch of Evil are interspersed throughout the series to illustrate how Sugar sees the world around him unspool like a movie. In a scene that blurs the line between “real world” and “reel world,” he sits in a busy cinema as Gena Rowlands declares “I think movies are a conspiracy.” (It’s a passage that becomes increasingly foreboding as the episodes go by.) This seesawing is clever at first (and a nifty catnip for eager cinephiles), but becomes gimmicky through unfocused repetition – sometimes the clips speak directly to the story; at others, they feel adrift, a sleight of hand that only serves to remind the viewer of all the great movies they could be watching instead.
It’s unfortunate to see a series with the scope of Sugar turn out to be a textbook example of style over substance. The reveal comes far too late in the game to ensure audiences will see the show through, and for those who have, the lack of resolution leaves a bitter aftertaste when there’s no guarantee of a second season. Gambling-wise, this one seems far, far too risky.
