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The Allure of Sugar Getting a TV show made isn’t easy. OK, so you’ve got an interesting idea and some good scripts – but a network or streaming platform will have many further questions. How much will it cost to make, which age/demographic will enjoy it, can it be distilled in a grabby one-line summary, could it recoup investment by running to multiple seasons? Nobody’s going to take a punt on your kooky pet project and risk losing money. Apple TV's Unconventional Approach At least that’s the theory, but Apple TV seems happy to commission shows having ticked none of the above boxes. Pound for pound – that is, ignoring the overwhelming volume of Netflix shows – it’s probably the best streamer in the game, having gambled and won on Severance, Ted Lasso, Slow Horses, The Studio, For All Mankind and Widow’s Bay. The World of Sugar Strutting around just above the duds is Sugar, starring Colin Farrell as Los Angeles private investigator John Sugar. In season one he probed the case of a missing young woman, turning up links between her loved ones and criminals of all stripes, with an air of detached melancholy accentuated by Farrell’s wistful voiceover and the regular homages to the show’s obvious inspiration, film noir. A Galactic Twist As well as shooting with a low or tilted camera and presenting LA as a city of desperate loners, Sugar included clips from classic noirs and other aesthetically similar black-and-white films, on the lead character’s TV screen at home or just spliced directly into the action. Farrell’s PI is a subscriber to American Cinematographer magazine who drives a classic 1960s Corvette. The Second Season And so, with our eyebrows still not fully descended two years later, we rejoin Farrell for season two, to find the whole extraterrestrial business pushed to the periphery. A quick spurt of housekeeping establishes that John Sugar is back in Tinseltown, alone and vaguely troubled by his missing sister on an ongoing basis. A Luxurious Labyrinth We are lost in another luxurious Apple labyrinth, but not unhappily so. Every moment of Sugar is divine to look at, while the concept of the protagonist’s main superpowers being weary kindness and naive sweetness, despite his alien biology affording him actual superpowers, continues to bewilder and amuse.