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- Apple TV+
- Apr 5, 2024
- Apple TV+
- Apr 5, 2024
Summary L.A. private detective John Sugar (Colin Farrell) investigates the disappearance of the granddaughter of a Hollywood producer in the drama series created by Mark Protosevich.
Created By: Mark Protosevich
- Apple TV+
- Apr 5, 2024
- Apple TV+
- Apr 5, 2024
Summary L.A. private detective John Sugar (Colin Farrell) investigates the disappearance of the granddaughter of a Hollywood producer in the drama series created by Mark Protosevich.
Created By: Mark Protosevich
Season Episodes
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Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
67
60% Positive
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
32% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
8% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
67
60% Positive
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
32% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
8% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Splendid, stylish. .... Farrell’s performance has a restrained, melancholy tenderness that suffuses the series. .... Sugar’s sweetness is a kind of superpower, a wild card in a world where almost everyone else can be expected to behave badly. That’s not the most unusual thing about him, but it’s the thing that makes him so much worth watching.
Apple TV+’s Sugar is a stylish throwback to classic film noir, with a compelling turn from star Colin Farrell.
Mr. Farrell and Ms. Ryan, first-rate actors, may not be Nick and Nora, but they make a memorable pair of fractured detectives. .... The troubling character is Ruby, though a viewer will have to stick with eight episodes to find out why. It will be easy. It's the stuff bad dreams are made of.
I found a lot of it absorbing, and nearly every performance first-rate. Did I buy it? Uh, most of it? None of it? Enough of it? Something like that, yes. If enough viewers go for the twist, well, the open-ended ending of “Sugar” sets up a second season with ease.
The version that Sugar mostly pretends to be for six episodes would probably do just fine without the big twist. (It helps that most of the installments hover around 35 minutes in length, keeping the story from bogging down in the way so many streaming series do.) For that matter, the show that Sugar turns out to be is interesting, too. It just completely undercuts what came before, while also arriving much too late to feel fully-formed when Protosevich decides it’s time to turn his cards face up.
The problem isn’t that the twist in Sugar doesn’t work. It’s actually quite intriguing. But almost all of that intrigue will have to wait for a second season, because although the twist is actually the premise of the overall series, the coyness is the point of the first season. And it’s that coyness that threatens to kill Sugar, or at least to drain most of the interest from the familiar and frequently bland foregrounded plot.
For most of the show, Sugar comes off as unconvincing wish fulfillment. If “Sugar” were able to sell its 11th-hour hairpin turn, it would need to earn our buy-in first through a more grounded portrait of a lost, searching soul. Instead, the show feels detached from reality even before it takes a turn for the surreal.
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