Pour a Little Sugar on It, Baby!

I must confess to being rather puzzled by recent stories about the upcoming Apple TV+ series Sugar, which will star award-winning Irish actor Colin Farrell as a Los Angeles gumshoe named John Sugar. The eight-part drama has been called “genre-bending” and “a science-fiction drama,” yet nowhere do I see any explanation that would justify such labeling. And a new trailer for the program, which is set to premiere on April 5, does nothing to clear up the matter.



Of the plot, Deadline says it finds Sugar “on the heels of the mysterious disappearance of Olivia Siegel [portrayed by Sydney Chandler], the beloved granddaughter of legendary Hollywood producer Jonathan Siegel [James Cromwell]. As Sugar tries to determine what happened to Olivia, he will also unearth Siegel family secrets; some very recent, others long-buried.” Again, this gives us nary a clue as to why Sugar, created by Mark Protosevich (I Am Legend), is “genre-bending.” Yes, the voice-over narration suggests that the protagonist may not be as much of a “good guy” as he seems; and there are those back-to-back points in the trailer where, first, actress Amy Ryan tells the private eye, “You have secrets,” and then Sugar develops an extreme twitch in his left hand, which leads to his self-scolding whisper, “Not now.” Otherwise, though, Sugar looks like another typical shamus yarn, its scenes blessed by Southern California sunshine but riddled with emotional complexities and sorrows.

I guess we’ll just have to wait until sometime closer to its debut to discover what’s so “unique” about this streaming show.