God bless Apple TV+. They’re one of the few big streaming services right now taking big chances on original programming, bringing us great series like Severance and Pluribus, hilarious sci-fi shows like Murderbot, and one of the best comedies currently on TV in The Studio. It doesn’t matter if not all of these shows are big hits; Apple is willing to take chances on them, no matter how weird the premises are.
And some of these shows get really weird. For instance: Sugar, a noir detective series starring Colin Farrell. If you’re looking for a mystery show with twists you truly won’t see coming, look no further.
Sugar begins like a detective series, like any other…
Forget it, Colin Farrell. It’s Chinatown.
Sugar is about John Sugar (Colin Farrell), a private investigator specializing in missing-person cases. He gets a job tracking down the granddaughter of a famous film producer (James Cromwell), which comfortably situates Sugar in a long line of hard-boiled detective stories. John Sugar is a troubled detective of the kind you might see in True Detective. The neo-noir mood and look of the show is full of references to Hollywood classics, from The Big Sleep to Chinatown to L.A. Confidential. Cromwell himself seems like he’s stepped right out of a 1940s film noir.
As for the plot, Sugar takes us down a rabbit hole that involves human trafficking, secret societies, and the ultra wealthy hiding their depraved activities beneath a sheen of respectability. Again, it’s all very much classic Hollywood detective stuff, and it’s entertaining, though sometimes you get the sense that the show is more in love with its slick, gritty tone than with the story it’s telling.
That is, until the twist comes along and turns Sugar into a completely different kind of show. We get little hints early on. John Sugar speaks several languages fluently. He seems to be able to drink a lot of alcohol without getting drunk. He injects himself with some mysterious substance after taking a wound. It might be drugs — that would fit with the gritty, troubled detective archetype — but it might be something else…
We’re going to talk about the twist now. You have been warned.
And the big twist is…
Last chance to avert your eyes
The twist is that John Sugar is an alien from outer space. He’s pretending to be a human detective to learn about the human species. He acts a lot like a detective from classic Hollywood because he watched a lot of classic Hollywood detective movies and absorbed the style.
We don’t learn this conclusively until Episode 6, which is insane to me. The first season of Sugar rolled out one episode at a time; it wasn’t like on Netflix, where all the episodes are dumped at once, so people can skip ahead and spread word of the twist ahead of time. Apple actually allowed the producers to pace the series deliberately and to blindside fans with the big reveal over halfway through, although a few had inklings that something wasn’t quite right ahead of time. In an age when we want our entertainment to be as simple and direct as possible, I have to admire the restraint.
This twist obviously changes the show in a huge way, but it also kind of changes the entire detective genre. You expect twists going into a detective series, but you don’t expect it to twist so hard that it turns into something else entirely. It makes you wonder what other detective shows are capable of. How deep into a new Sherlock Holmes mystery are we going to be before he whips out a time machine? After Sugar, I feel like anything’s possible.
If I’m being honest, I don’t think Sugar is the best detective show I’ve ever seen, although it is legitimately solid in that department. But it is the best detective-sci-fi fusion show I’ve ever seen, which is worth something. When in doubt, just create your own category.
John Sugar will return
To do heaven knows what
The big twist also makes me very curious to see what’s in store for Sugar season 2, which is confirmed to be on the way, although we don’t have a release date as of yet; hopefully, it’ll be along sometime in 2026, along with a lot of other great sci-fi shows we have our eye on.
The first season ended with John Sugar deciding to stay on Earth and continue working as a detective, and he now has a clear enemy to face off with in the second season. I don’t think the show is going to flip itself on its head again, but I like that I can’t be sure.
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With thanks to the giant dorks at Apple TV+
Honestly, it makes sense that Apple TV+ would be the one to make a show like Sugar. While Apple produces a lot of TV shows, a noticeably large number of them are in the sci-fi genre, from Foundation to Invasion to Silo and beyond. It figures that even when they try to make a detective series, they can’t help but bring sci-fi into it.
And I love that they follow their weird passion that way. Sugar isn’t a hugely popular show, in part because the premise is so off-the-wall strange. Yet, Apple is willing to pay what I assume is Colin Farrell’s lofty salary and keep it going for the passionate fans out there, and in the hopes that it will turn into something bigger down the line. The willingness to take risks like this is why Apple TV+ is becoming the new home of prestige TV.
- Release Date
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April 5, 2024
- Showrunner
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Mark Protosevich
- Directors
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Fernando Meirelles
- Writers
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Mark Protosevich
