Smart and Sweet

In ‘Sugar,’ out now from Apple TV, Colin Farrell plays John Sugar, a man with a mysterious past who now works as a private investigator who specializes in finding the missing. He’s supremely confident, competent, and smart—all of which applies to the show as well, a refreshing return to the basics of what makes an entertaining detective series.

Sugar is fearless, self-contained, and dangerous—but polite. There’s no other word that quite fits. In an age of too many barely restrained psychopaths, Sugar doesn’t like to hurt people. That doesn’t mean he won’t, as he demonstrates in the first five minutes of the pilot episode as he breaks a man’s arm.

But he is courteous—almost courtly—to the people he meets, and cares about strangers more than he seems to care about himself. He offers a homeless man cash and a plane ticket home because he likes the guy’s dog. 

Sugar has a boss, or a caretaker, named Ruby (played by the always exceptional Kirby Howell-Baptiste), who finds work for him, though she’d rather he take time off to deal with his unnamed neurological condition that causes seizures and hallucinations.

After a quick trip to Japan, however, Sugar begins searching for Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler), the granddaughter of legendary movie producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell). Sugar is a huge movie buff — an unabashed fanboy of Siegel’s work — and something about Olivia reminds him of his own (dead) sister. There is no way he’s walking away from this job.

In short order, he meets a whole cast of suspects: Olivia’s half-brother, David, a former child star looking for a comeback (Nate Corddry); her father Bernie (Dennis Boutsikaris), a cheap imitation of his own father; Melanie (Amy Ryan), an alcoholic former singer and former wife of Bernie; and a group of shady thugs led by Stallings (Eric Lange).

And then there’s the dead body in the trunk of the car. 

‘Sugar’ is a neo-noir that takes its influences seriously, but is still fun to watch. It moves along quickly, with the occasional sudden burst of violence whenever things get too quiet.

Also in a nice change from other shows, Sugar asks the obvious questions—like, “Why are you lying to me?” when someone is clearly full of shit. But, again, he’s always polite about it.

Like all Apple TV productions, ‘Sugar’ is beautiful. Everything looks like it’s been polished to a high gloss with hundred-dollar bills. The quality goes deeper than just the surface. The cast is excellent, all the way down to the henchmen. 

At the center is Farrell, who plays with underlying restraint and charm. He actually seems like a nice guy, even though there’s no way a man who can do what he does is anything as simple as “nice.”

Three episodes in, and we’re learning Sugar’s past is probably even darker than his present. He speaks multiple languages and knows multiple ways to break and enter and break bones. Ruby seems more like a spy agency’s handler than his friend, and she has a whole club of people just like Sugar that she manages.

The mystery of what happened to Olivia is almost secondary to the history Sugar is trying to escape. It’s pretty clear he doesn’t want to be that guy anymore. He wears Savile Row suits like a uniform, and prefers to live in a hotel room rather than an apartment or house. Ruby can only get him to carry a gun by bribing him with the vintage piece once carried by Glenn Ford in “The Big Heat.”

He is deliberately making himself into an archetype—Chandler’s tarnished knight, the tough-as-nails guy with a wounded heart, helping other people with their problems to avoid his own. He wraps himself in the armor of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade in an effort to become someone else.

But as Glen David Gold once wrote, “Nice is a quality. Polite is a strategy.” It will be interesting to see what Sugar is willing to do as he gets closer to the answers behind the missing girl — and what he reveals when he’s finally forced to give up his own secrets.