SummaryL.A. private detective John Sugar (Colin Farrell) investigates the disappearance of the granddaughter of a Hollywood producer in the drama series created by Mark Protosevich.
SummaryL.A. private detective John Sugar (Colin Farrell) investigates the disappearance of the granddaughter of a Hollywood producer in the drama series created by Mark Protosevich.
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.
I have watched through episode 6. After episode 8, I may change my rating.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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.
Since they're both recent film noir thrillers, comparisons with the new Netflix series Ripley (my review) are inevitable, but they're nothing alike. Where that one was all about the style, this one is all about Colin Farrell. He plays a private investigator, who is hired by a Hollywood producer (James Cromwell) to find his granddaughter. He drives around LA in a cool turquoise Corvette. He isn't a drunk (a genre staple), but does have occasional tremors. The big character trait is that he's a sweet guy, as opposed to the usual jaded types. Fortunately, Farrell creates this guy with charm and depth. The locations and cinematography add some noir flair. The mystery falls along typical lines and the action is average, so it's all about Farrell's complex performance. BTW, this review is based on 6 out of 8 30-minute eps, but I understand that there's a final twist that suggests a 2nd season.
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.