I’ve been a fan of film noir ever since I saw The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, and other films from the 30s and 40s when I was a kid. One of my favorites was Chinatown from 1974 starring Jack Nicholson and directed by Roman Polanski. This genre has a fun vibe to it. The mystery and crime elements were right up my alley. The latest film noir crime series is Sugar starring Colin Farrell from AppleTV Plus.

John Sugar (Colin Farrell) is a private investigator in the City of Angels, Los Angeles.  He drives a classic blue 1960s Corvette and finds missing people. When he gets a call from a film producer Jonathan Segal (James Cromwell) to come see him about his missing granddaughter Ruby (Sydney Chandler) he accepts. He hires him to find her but there are a lot of moving parts in this investigation.  Like a lot of film noirs, shady characters are trying to stop the lead character, Sugar and there are plenty of twists and turns in this story. That’s what makes these types of films so interesting.

Mark Protosevich writer/executive producer/ creator, directors Fernando Meiriellas & Adam Arkin have created one of the most interesting film noirs I’ve ever seen. There is a sci-fi element to the series I won’t spoil here but a part of that is The Polyglot Society, a group of people who study sound and space phenomenon. This group plays a big part in the series. They add a strange element to what is already a fascinating show from the start. Eric Lange plays Stallings, one of the members of the group and he is doing the bidding of someone higher, which is an enigmatic force in the story. 

With the story taking place in Los Angeles there are ties to Hollywood. There is a subplot involving a movie and a father-son team that directed it and starred in it. The father of the missing girl and her brother. These two also play a part in the mystery involving the missing girl. She has more to do with the overall story than first thought. She’s just not a missing girl. That’s where the writingcomes in. The various threads of the story fit together nicely.

Even with everything else going on in this show the writers somehow add in a romantic angle to the story. Sugar is hanging out at a bar one day and meets a blonde named Melanie Matthews (Amy Ryan). The two hit it off and become acquainted with each other.  Of course, nothing in this series is by coincidence and the Ryan character has a bigger role to play in the larger events that transpire throughout. She plays it close to the vest until she has to reveal her cards. Like other film noirs, she is the mysterious woman the main character can’t fully figure out. Ryan is good in this role opposite Ferrell’s Sugar. They work well together.

Colin Farrell has done a lot in his career from working with Steven Spielberg twice and Tom Cruise in Minority Report to playing Oswald Cobblepot in Matt Reeves’ The Batman. He was nominated for an Academy Award for The Banshees of Inisherin a couple of years ago. This might be one of the best things of his career though. He channels classic film noir actors like Humphrey Bogart, Orson Wells, and the aforementioned Jack Nicholson.  He was perfectly cast in this role. He is able to play both sides of this private investigator. He does a lot of subtle little things that make this character his own. It’s one of the best-written and acted characters I’ve seen on television or streaming all year. I will never forget John Sugar.

With film noir or investigative shows like Sugar, there are a lot of twists and turns that make watching said film or series interesting. Sugar has a lot of those twists and turns. With each episode, you never know what is going to happen next. They even have cliffhangers like classic detective shows and serials. Which gets the viewers pumped to see the next episode. This show is the perfect example of that. With each cliffhanger, I wanted to watch the next episode to see where this story was going to go. That’s a sign of a great series to me.

Two of the coolest things about this show are that the creator uses clips from old movies and interspersed them throughout the episodes.  When they are needed in various scenes or during specific circumstances of the series. I loved it when these popped up periodically. The other is Farrell’s character of Sugar has an inner monologue which helps the audience see and hear what he’s thinking. The information we get is very valuable in the story going forward. These two things brought a whole new level to a show that could otherwise be a run-of-the-mill PI series.

Sugar is one of the best film noir series I’ve ever seen. The creators, writers, and directors kept me and I’m sure others on their feet throughout. The mysteries and twists and turns were all fantastic. The setting of Los Angeles was perfect for this story like so many others like it. Colin Ferrell gives one of the best performances of his career as John Sugar. The sci-fi elements of the show will have to be discovered by the audience when they watch it. I’m not spoiling anything here. I cannot say this enough though. Everyone should see this show as soon as it starts to air on AppleTV Plus.  It’s that good of a series and I want to see more shows like this that take risks and combine different genres.

All 8 Episodes Have Been Watched and Reviewed

5 stars

Dan Skip Allen