Colin Farrell Adds Some Sugar to the Detective Genre in New Apple Drama

“I don’t like to hurt people,” John Sugar (Colin Farrell) says at the beginning of Sugar, the Apple TV+ series created by Mark Protosevich (The Cell) and directed for the most part by Fernando Meirelles (City of God). He means it.

As an onscreen private investigator, Sugar is atypical. He’s disarming and warm, even kind. The guy’s multilingual and speaks fluent Japanese, Arabic, and Spanish. And he’s patient — and that’s with everyone, mind, even violent types who pull guns on him or slash open his tailored suit jacket. (Savile Row, where else?) Women invite him to bed; he tucks them in and goes home. Sugar also likes movies — he subscribes to Sight And Sound and Cahiers du Cinéma, among other notable mags — and, just to be thorough, he’s very fond of dogs and cats. Mike Hammer, he is not.

To say Sugar likes movies is to undersell it. It’s more like an avid, childlike fondness. His whole deal — the career, the suits, the hair, the Corvette — is assembled from Sugar’s favorite film noirs; he curates his life based on the best he sees in his cinematic heroes, style and grace being their principal qualities. At his best, and a good portion of Sugar sees Farrell’s character in peak form, he evokes the gentler sides of gumshoes like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe while omitting their baser, crueler aspects. Meirelles even works in kaleidoscopic pulls from movies like The Killers, Double Indemnity, and The Maltese Falcon (among many others) to accentuate the character’s calibrated life choices. Meet John Sugar, Meta Private Eye.

But all is not well with John, as we discover early on. For one, his hand trembles. His latest case, in which movie mogul Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell) hires Sugar to locate his troubled granddaughter Olivia (Sydney Chandler, daughter of Kyle), opens old wounds related to his well-guarded past. These flaws in Sugar’s armor later make him vulnerable to the Los Angeles criminal element, testing his genial nature and the secrecy of the hush-hush organization that employs him.

As to this coterie of multi-fluent international types who count John among their numbers, it doesn’t have a name. But it is managed by Ruby (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), who’s here to check John on protocol (taking clients without her say-so is disrespectful), bicker over where he should live (she doesn’t like his hotel bungalow), and tsk-tsk about his health. Howell-Baptiste, going simply by “Kirby” in the credits, brings firmness and familiarity to her role that aids the sunshine vibes of Sugar in underexplored yet wonderful ways, a platonic M for Farrell’s sexless (but not unsexy) 007.

At one point, Ruby insists that Sugar carry a gun, which, in keeping with this series’s modest subversion of noir tropes, is an idea he dislikes. But it’s not just any gun; Ruby has procured and restored the rod Glenn Ford used in Fritz Lang’s 1953 film, The Big Heat. “Who’s playing who?” Sugar asks Ruby in the cadence of his heroes, his eyes full of fanboy wonder.

When it comes to toying with these ancient PI bromides, Sugar rarely misses a trick. It’s fun to watch, especially during the first half of these eight episodes, largely due to Farrell, the stacked cast surrounding him, and the tony production. At first, it seems Protosevich and Meirelles have tapped into the breezy tone of Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey (the series even shares that film’s jigsaw editing) without fully descending into the queasiness of other, grimmer L.A. neo-noirs like Under the Silver Lake or Chinatown. Later? That’s different. But in Sugar’s first hours, as John takes frequent spins in that Corvette and the reflection of the California palms dance across its waxed hood, it’s remarkably easy to shift into its groove.

This relaxed tempo works wonders, given the well-trod noir trappings that make up much of the season. John’s big headache is the Siegel family, a waning Hollywood dynasty that doesn’t appreciate his presence and thwarts his search for Olivia at every step. Chief among these Hollywood clout-hounds is Bernie, Jonathan’s scummy producer offspring (Dennis Boutsikaris), whose current ambition (among his filmography: Cop vs. Cop and Mr. Mayhem) is to revive the career of his former child star son, Davey (Nate Corddry). That means silencing the several aspiring starlets who have raised heinous allegations against Davey, a scheme masterminded in part by Bernie’s trophy wife, Wendy (Elizabeth Anweis).

Protosevich’s story loves the Siegels yet struggles to find much for them to do. Cromwell and Boutsikaris fare best, with one memorably vicious and peppery scene set during a film revival (hosted by TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz, a nice touch). As for Davey, his sex crimes are a layer of sleaze that oozes over the first half of these eight episodes and bubbles underneath Olivia’s disappearance, yet these story points never satisfyingly converge. That might be due to the amount of focus put on Davey, given his status in the series; the scripts mine for nuance, but Davey often comes off more like Bernie’s lackey than an exploited, exhausted, and dangerous golden goose.

In fact, the Siegel chapter in John’s career journal (the source for his whiskey-scorched narration) feels incomplete once Sugar ends. Blame this on a wild swing late in the season that will either ruin viewers’ enthusiasm for this series or enhance it, a ballsy tee-up for a much more fanciful, plot-driven second season, should it come. If it does, and can operate more freely outside the murk of spoiler culture, Sugar might also feel more confident in substance as well as style.

For now, that some will not see its disorienting twists coming is a testament to the sunny rhythms of Sugar and Farrell’s performance. The actor, clocking in at 47, looks visibly cozy in this role; the lines on his face have yet to settle into a world-weary crease, accentuating his boyish charms and those of his character. And while Sugar brazenly (perhaps destructively?) removes the ground from under its viewers, Farrell’s magnetism is gravity enough to yank us back to terra firma. Sugar doesn’t completely cinch its quest for purpose and meaning, but that doesn’t make watching its pursuit any less fun, surprising, or sweet.

Sugar premieres April 5 with two episodes on Apple TV+. New episodes drop every Friday. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Jarrod Jones is a freelance writer currently settled in Chicago. He reads lots (and lots) of comics and, as a result, is kind of a dunderhead.