SUGAR Season One
The Human Jungle
UK/US Apple TV+, Fridays, streaming now
Creator Mark Protosevich
Cast Colin Farrell, Kirby, Amy Ryan, Dennis Boutsikaris, Nate Corddry
EPISODES 1.01-1.08 There’s a chance that any SFX reader watching Sugar on our recommendation could get four or five episodes in and throw in the towel. The brainchild of screenwriter Mark Protosevich, whose credits include The Cell, I Am Legend and Thor, the series initially presents itself as a straight neo-noir thriller.
So without wishing to ruin a delightful surprise, we’ll say this: hang on in there, because a twist is coming – one as audacious, in its way, as the entirely different rug-pull in Angel Heart.
Not that you wouldn’t get any indication that something is afoot. When it comes to the main character, John Sugar (Colin Farrell), a nagging feeling soon grows that perhaps he’s a bit too good to be true.
Not only does this LA private dick dress immaculately in Savile Row suits, cruise around in a vintage car, and speak everything from Spanish to Arabic, but his moral code seems pretty saintly, extending way beyond basic decency. Early on, he takes a sincere interest in a homeless man’s predicament, offering to pay for a flight to visit a family member. Can such a knight in shining armour really exist?
Sugar is a keen cinephile too – even subscribing to Sight And
Sound! The series’ format reflects this, intercutting his investigations with brief snippets from old movies, from well-known titles like Sunset Boulevard and Vertigo to more obscure ones such as The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers.
This dense metafictionality is not only a treat for similarly movie-mad viewers, who’ll enjoy playing name that clip, but insinuates a vague sense that perhaps the reality being presented here is in some way or another just a studio-backlot facade itself.
Eventually such bubbling suspicions turn out to be well-founded. While that astonishing late-stage pivot is fascinatingly transformative, Sugar is compelling in its early stages too. The series makes use of the noir trope of voiceover narration, and Sugar’s basic mission – find a young woman who’s gone missing, on behalf of her Hollywood producer grandfather – could have been torn from the pages of a Raymond Chandler novel. However, the territory it takes us into (an often morally grey world of Hollywood high-rollers) feels very modern, encompassing #Metoo, Instagram reels, human traffickers, and other contemporary bogeymen a world away from coin-tossing gangsters.
Unlike many streaming series, it’s not over-extended; after the opening instalment’s scene-setting is concluded, the episodes average out at about 35 minutes’ duration. An additional twist in the finale’s closing stages (which provides a possible direction for a second season) fails to convince. But that’s about the only significant failing of this slick, hip and ingeniously constructed show, which hopefully may turn on some of its audience to a string of Hollywood classics. Ian Berriman
Other old movies glimpsed include The Big Heat, Gilda, Johnny Guitar, The Killers, Kiss Me Deadly and Sweet Smell Of Success.
Can such a knight in shining armour exist?