A TV drama built around hard-bitten, rule-breaking detectives cracking cases on the mean streets of a city like Los Angeles can amount to streaming gold if you do it right. Prime Video, for example, squeezed seven seasons out of Bosch, and still found enough juice for not one but two spinoff series. And now Apple TV+ is about to get in on the act, with its new eight-episode detective series Sugar starring Colin Farrell as a private eye who cracks skulls as well as cases.
Here’s why I’m hopeful. There’s a mighty fine cast in addition to Farrell that’s also part of Sugar, which Apple released the first trailer for today. We’re talking Amy Ryan (The Office), James Cromwell (Succession), Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad), and Dennis Boutsikaris (who played one of the attorneys representing the Sandpiper nursing home in Better Call Saul). I also like that Dashiell Hammett-style narration seems to be in the cards here, so much so that you half-expect Sugar at any minute to start railing about things like dames and stool pigeons.
“Someone once said, ‘Tip the world on its side, and everything loose lands in Los Angeles,’” Sugar deadpans at one point in the series. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about; the only thing missing is a Maltese falcon for him to go off in search of.
What gives me pause, of course, is the obvious. To say this kind of story has been told before is the understatement of the year. Someone’s gone missing! A detective goes off in search of them, and then get a load of this … the detective doesn’t always play by the rules. Apple TV+, for its part, is promising that surprises will ensue. Sugar, its official description notes, “is a contemporary, unique take on one of the most popular and significant genres in literary, motion picture and television history: The private detective story.
“Academy Award-nominee Farrell stars as John Sugar, an American private investigator on the heels of the mysterious disappearance of Olivia Siegel, the beloved granddaughter of legendary Hollywood producer Jonathan Siegel. As Sugar tries to determine what happened to Olivia, he will also unearth Siegel family secrets; some very recent, others long-buried.”
Check out a trailer below for Sugar, the first two episodes of which debut April 5.