AppleTV’s Sugar doesn’t just embrace noir in general, it attempts to be a modern neo-noir grounded in a reality of its own off-kilter making, while also paying homage to classic crime dramas of the ‘30s and 40’s. It’s a risky proposition—trying to have it both ways, but I’ll be damned if I’m not intrigued by the first two episodes currently available for viewing on the screening service.
It helps that in casting Colin Farrell as Detective John Sugar the series has an actor who can go a long way in covering up the weight of some of the standard tropes of the genre: the woozy score, the moody voiceover, voice over, and the hard-boiled dialogue, just to name a few. A great example of that dialogue comes when Sugar is told to go fuck himself by a low-rent Hollywood film producer he is questioning. Sugar responds internally with “Being told to fuck off is usually a sign of progress.” You might have to see it to truly appreciate the humor of the moment, but I’m not really a laugh out loud guy, and, well, I laughed out loud.
Farrell’s enigmatic private eye has one specialty: finding missing people. He prefers not to carry a gun, but when his business manager hands him the pistol Glenn Ford used in The Big Heat, he relents. The level of noir references are significant and frequent. Sugar smartly posits its hero as a film addict who loves those old movies, but inserting shots of Humphrey Bogart into the show (sometimes mid-scene) may be a taste one needs to acquire.
I would strongly suggest you try though. Because both of the first two episodes feel like nothing else on TV, even when you’re not totally sure it’s working. To get a full sense of the show, I suspect one will definitely need to see more of it (Sugar is a slow burn). Aside from the great work of the show’s lead, director Fernando Merreiles (City of God, The Constant Gardener, The Two Popes) is working at a very high level too.
The series starts in full black and white in Tokyo, and then just as Sugar is leaving the posh hotel–having completed his job, walking quickly over its marble floors, the scene beautifully shifts to color, and the design of that flooring practically jumps off the screen at you as you take in its full glory. And while the show is very much centered on its lead thus far, there’s also a plum role for the always welcome Amy Ryan as ”a person of interest,” with connections to the family of the missing young woman. Ryan is so good that in probably less than fifteen minutes of screen time, you practically find yourself looking at the corners of the screen longing for her return. Ryan has long been one of our best actors, and her ability to keep you guessing as to her character’s true motives is like watching a high-grade magic trick.
Having said that, much of episode one and two is centered around character and the establishment of Sugar’s seemingly familiar, yet rather eccentric, mood. That’s not to say Sugar doesn’t have anything to hang its hat on other than style and starshine. Far from it. Having entered the peak of his career, Farrell once again showcases that he’s not so much a “star” in the cheapest sense of the word, but a character actor who just happens to be ridiculously handsome. Farrell is working in a low-key mode here. I know many who have seen the trailer for Sugar have made references to True Detective, and while both shows are in the same genre, they are distinctly different pieces of work.
One might think of Sugar as a chance for Farrell to make up for the much maligned True Detective season 2 (in which he played a cop on the edge). I’ll not digress by going into a fulsome, if modest, defense of TD2, but what I will say is Farrell was brilliant in that anthology series’ second season, but anyone looking for a version of that guy in Sugar is not going to find him. Farrell’s Sugar is another character that shows the great depth of range that the Irish actor has at his command, but has only been heralded for in recent years.
The basic setup of Sugar is Farrell’s title character being hired by an aging film legend to find his missing, drug-addicted granddaughter. (It must be said that Sugar’s client being played by the great James Cromwell might just trigger some L.A. Confidential fans, in a good way, of course).
As noirs go, director Meirelles has crafted a rather ethereal one with his star and producer. John Sugar may be willing to put a hurt on someone if necessary, but he genuinely (even sorrowfully) hates violence. He tries to keep his life very simple, but his line of work just won’t allow it. Not to mention, Sugar is haunted (and motivated) by a family tragedy that is only partially explained in episodes one and two.
John Sugar isn’t sad, exactly, but he is melancholy, and despite a desire to live a minimalist life, he can’t help but take up the cause of a homeless man and his dog (don’t worry, the dog doesn’t get Wick’d—not yet anyway), which for a solitary man like himself presents a sizable complication, but also serves to show an empathetic (and significant) reveal of just who this odd man is.
Which, if I’m being honest, is (thus far) the real mystery of Sugar. While all the pieces are in place for a cracking, if overly familiar, story of a private eye who tracks down the missing, the series appears far more interested in the the person most (figuratively) lost, John Sugar himself. Here is a man whose whole life is built around his high-level comprehension of human nature, and when he looks into the mirror what he sees is unknowable.
This is going to be a weird year for TV. The length of the SAG and WGA strikes is surely going to deplete the number of high-quality series options we are used to in the near term. But if you are looking for a “prestige drama” (god, I hate that phrase) and you are willing to be patient with Sugar, I think you just might find what you are looking for.
