Sugar review – Colin Farrell’s detective show is a luxurious noir labyrinth

Getting a TV show made isn’t easy: networks want to know cost, audience, a grabby one-line summary and multi-season potential, and few will risk a kooky project. Apple TV, however, has often green-lit unlikely ideas and won — Severance, Ted Lasso, Slow Horses, The Studio, For All Mankind and Widow’s Bay — while also fielding oddball charmers such as Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed and Margo’s Got Money Troubles and baffling misfires like Government Cheese and Hello Tomorrow!.

Strutting just above the duds is Sugar, with Colin Farrell as Los Angeles private investigator John Sugar. Season one followed his probe into a missing young woman, turning up links between her loved ones and criminals of all stripes, all delivered with Farrell’s wistful voiceover and frequent homages to film noir; the PI subscribes to American Cinematographer, drives a 1960s Corvette, and, three-quarters of the way through, the show revealed that John Sugar is an alien concealing his bright blue self.

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