‘Sugar’ Review: Close Encounters of the Noir Kind
Contains spoilers for Season 1 of “Sugar.”
The first season of “Sugar” had a twist that, even for those who noticed it coming, modified all the things about the present. Released on Apple TV in 2024, the collection was a love poem to movie noir with a thriller about the lacking granddaughter of a Hollywood mogul that recalled “Chinatown” and “The Big Sleep.” In the background was a second thriller: Who, or what, was John Sugar, the dapper, sad-eyed non-public eye, performed by Colin Farrell, who labored for a mysterious group and appeared to have uncommon capabilities?
Eventually the present gave up its secret: Sugar was an alien, half of a bunch despatched to Earth to watch humanity with unspecified however apparently benevolent objectives. We had been watching a science-fiction story all alongside, however as a result of the hero had modeled his terrestrial type and values on the previous, black-and-white crime films he watched each night time, we had additionally been watching a noir.
In the second eight-episode season of “Sugar,” which premiered on Friday, Sugar is extra remoted than ever. His alien companions returned residence at the finish of the first season, and to his and the viewers’s nice misfortune, the human love curiosity performed by the fantastic Amy Ryan is gone as properly.
His associates are actually customary crime-story varieties: the younger girl he hires to drive for him and, when she proves herself in a position, to assist him examine (Sasha Calle); the sincere, oddball cop who offers him inside data (Shea Whigham). They step up at key moments as he appears to be like for a lacking petty prison (Raymond Lee) who has run afoul of a bent sheriff’s deputy (Tony Dalton). This “Sugar” is much less noir fantasy, extra gritty Los Angeles crime procedural.
It remains to be genuinely romantic at coronary heart, although, in a approach that units it other than different collection in its varied genres. Under a brand new showrunner, Sam Catlin (“Breaking Bad,” “Preacher”) — who takes over from Simon Kinberg and the present’s creator, Mark Protosevich — he strives for a contact of poetry and achieves it usually sufficient to maintain his self respect.
The present retains its most conspicuous gadget, the insertion of snippets from basic Hollywood movies that echo Sugar’s emotions about occasions in the actual world of the story: “Gilda” when he encounters a brand new femme fatale (Laura Donnelly of “Outlander”), “Vertigo” when he must pretend a dying. The soundtrack, with numbers like “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road),” “C’est si bon” and “Twilight Time,” contributes to the nostalgia signaling.
These elaborations are pleasant in their very own proper, though they begin to really feel pressured, like a tour information who will not cease speaking. And they’re variety of redundant as a result of the present already has the solely factor it must sign retro California cool and wounded the Aristocracy: Colin Farrell, in a crisp white shirt, slim darkish go well with and sun shades, cruising round Los Angeles in his Corvette Sting Ray.
“Sugar” is in an extended line of tales about an alien who desires of being human whereas, of course, being extra human — in the good sense — than the craven meat sacks he lives amongst. Farrell completely captures Sugar’s combine of estrangement and surprise; it’s simple to imagine that they’re each working on a barely larger airplane than the relaxation of us.
The collection isn’t overly political, however respect for the outsider is one of its major themes. Working in the melting pot of Los Angeles, with associates, shoppers and enemies of colour, Sugar self-identifies as a lonely immigrant, reduce off from residence and cautious of assimilation, which his planet’s guidelines forbid.
And the Golden State is the promise that “Sugar” holds out, the gleaming, sordid, all-too-human reward for the traveler, irrespective of how far he has to go to get there. As it has been for generations of noir gumshoes, it is the sprint of utopia in the cocktail of fatalism. “I can never go back home,” Sugar says. “But — there’s always California.”
