Sugar

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.

Beautiful cinematography, color grading, and Colin Farrell are always a treat for the eyes. The first half kept up the tension really well, but by the end the overall impression got a bit muddled. Still it's an 8/10. Definitely worth watching if you enjoy the aesthetic of good detective stories of the past.

I have watched through episode 6. After episode 8, I may change my rating. . In episode 1, Sugar is eating at a Japanese restaurant. He snatches a fly out of the air with his chopsticks and then releases it - unharmed. So, we know right away that this story is trying to tell us something that is odd. Through subsequent episodes it becomes clear that there is a lot the viewer is not privy to. Several episodes later a character observes that Sugar is "very, very strange" which at least lets the viewer know that it is not his imagination - something is very weird about this series. Is Sugar on the spectrum? Are we seeing bad acting or weird character portrayal? . And, then - the ultimate reveal... a lengthy clip of a 1950s film that is often considered one of the greatest films of all time. Then, it becomes clear what Sugar is about. BTW... that 1950s film was a box office failure and the director subsequently never made another film. . So, the astute viewers are now able to see how the film fits together and how the producers are doing the things they love to do and they do not care that 99% of their audience have no idea what the film is about.

"Sugar" (S01, 8 eps, 35+ mins, Apple) Colin Farrell stars in the title role, as made-up sounding as it is. He's pretty good in this, as is the rest of the cast (minus one, below), though I expected more of Amy Ryan and her character. Head writer/creator Mark Proto' has some decent movie titles behind him so he tried this 8-ep series and I think he kind of failed in that. There were too many boring lulls in this, he just didn't get the pacing right. Also, much has been made of this being a retro noir-type of PI show, but to be true to that type, it needs to be shot in B/W with a fair amount of rain scenes - neither of which was utilized here. Sugar drives around in an immaculate '65 conv vette which is "off" given the present-day setting, and his status as a PI - they typically cruise in beaters. Anyway, the story itself is his determination to find a missing young woman despite taking "friendly fire" so to speak. "Ruby", his handler/agent, is played by Kirby Howell who just doesn't fit the role, sorry. The editing is pretty bad, too, as you'll notice certain skips/jumps in the story that make you think "did I miss something?!" The story's conclusion is fine, not great, but there's an epilogue that ties to his alien origin (not a spoiler, just an attribute of his character) and that's just not satisfying either. In fact, it's just not enough to make you desire a season two if Apple even grants it.

A waste of an actor as good as Colin Farrell, lost here in a plot that's very hard to follow. When the "big payoff" comes to explain it all, it doesn't. And you'll wish you could get back the time you spent watching this show, and invest it in something ... human.

Made it to episode 3 before realizing I respect myself too much to go on. The same tactic of luring in the viewer with callbacks to the golden ages of Hollywood, when TV & film were actually well made, only to pull the sudden bait and switch of "modern" politics and sensibilities. Basically meaning unnecessary homosexuality everywhere (since when is homosexual a bad word and why is it censored on Metacritic?) and third grade level writing of good guys versus bad guys. How many shows have to fail before Hollywood wakes up and realizes we're not here for it?.. I'm just glad I didn't waste money on Apple to watch this.