For a show conceptually at the risk of being a one-season wonder, Sugar returns for another eight-episode run that in fact builds smartly on the original, setting it up for further success. Fusing two distinct, seemingly incompatible genres with surprising efficacy, the show is a unique subject-matter hybrid, combining “case-of-the-season” noir mysteries with overarching, X-Files-esque science fictional lore.
In the first season, we met John Sugar (Colin Farrell), a highly successul private investigator with expensive tastes and a passion for old-school Hollywood. Sugar, however, is also an alien being — a dyed-in-the-wool Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style alien masquerading as a human, part of an expeditionary group dedicated to studying humankind. Sugar has remained on Earth following the mass exodus of the rest of his kind, and to battle his isolation, he takes another case — searching for the missing brother, Ji-Sook (Raymond Lee), of up-and-coming boxer Danny Moon (Jin Ha). Ji’s criminal activities and drug problem are a constant source of grief for Danny, but his brother is all he’s got, so Sugar — with the help of his detective friend Tom Flybjerg (Shea Whigham) and new assistant Val (Sasha Calle) — sets off to find out what happened to Ji. During the case, he develops a romantic attraction to another guest at the hotel, Charlotte Fischer (Laura Donnelly), and learns that Ji’s plight ties into a crooked cop named Ray Vega (Tony Dalton), and a vaster conspiracy.
Sugar’s buzzy debut gained notoreity for its stylish panache and the clever concealment and reveal of its science-fictional infrastructure — which likely came too far out of left field for some viewers. If anything, though, season two has a firmer grasp of the show’s dueling genres and how to wield them together. Again, the noir surface is the stronger of the two, and again, Sugar’s curious, caring nature — given effortless appeal by Farrell — subverts the cynical antiheroism so common to that genre. But the show is keenly aware that PI shows in general, and noir in particular, get a ton of thematic mileage out of situating their heroes in the in-between places: law and order on one side, crime and violence on the other, with the detective ever edging along the line that separates them. Season two of Sugar extends that duality to its science-fictional elements, as Sugar wrestles with his benevolent, alien mission in the face of situations that threaten to escalate his submersion into his human side, specifically sex and violence. The smart intentionality of these themes, combined with the confident style and a uniformly excellent acting, more than makes up for the slightly weaker science fiction elements, which remain on the periphery for most of the season and are on the ephemeral side when they do appear. Still, the construction feels mindful, optimized for a running series that makes its bread and butter on its investigatory A plot, while giving it added thematic depth with an unexpected SF layer. I’m not sure if Sugar has been picked up for another season, but it certainly seems primed for a longer run, and I hope Apple gets behind it, but it’s doing something slick, interesting, and unique.
