Colin Farrell’s ‘Sugar’ Is a Clumsy, Cliché L.A. Noir With a Baffling Twist: TV Review
variety.comAlison Herman TV Critic If John Sugar, the PI played by a gravel-voiced Colin Farrell in the eponymous crime drama “Sugar,” seems like too much a collection of noir clichés and male fantasies to be a plausible protagonist, that’s partly by design.
But the Apple TV+ series, created by screenwriter Mark Protosevich (“I Am Legend,” Spike Lee’s “Oldboy”), executive produced by Audrey Chon (“The Twilight Zone” reboot, “Invasion”) Simon Kinberg (the original “Mr. & Mrs.
Smith,” “Dark Phoenix”) and directed by Fernando Meirelles (“The Constant Gardener,” “The Two Popes”), doesn’t reveal its true nature until far too late in the game — at which point a clumsy twist introduces an entirely new premise with little in the way of legible buildup or coherent follow-through.
Until then, viewers spend the better part of the eight-episode season trudging through a rote mystery weighed down by clumsy dialogue and wooden performances.
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