Hands down, one of my favorite Apple TV+ binges of 2024 has to be Sugar — the Colin Farrell-led detective series set in Los Angeles that you start out thinking is a stylish-looking crime drama, before it throws you an insane twist out of left field that transforms the show into something entirely different. I don’t say this lightly, but it might actually be the wildest twist I’ve seen from a TV show or movie, ever, and it’s made all the more daring because it comes late in the series, so it’s one of those things where — if you’ve hung on until close to the end — you now realize that everything you thought you knew was wrong.
Needless to say, I’m ecstatic that Apple’s streamer has announced a season two pickup for the show, which stars Farrell as John Sugar — a guy who looks, on the surface, to be a sort of classic Hollywood gumshoe type, a la Sam Spade. Sugar loves nice suits, old movies, and classic cars, and as far as his work goes, he does one thing and one thing only: Find people who’ve gone missing, whether that’s on behalf of a yakuza client in Japan or a big-time Hollywood producer in LA.
The twist I referred to above comes towards the end of the season, in Episode 6. I won’t spoil it here, because it’s so good that you really need to experience it cold if you can. I suspect it probably contributed to word of mouth about the show, which in turn delivered the kind of audience numbers that Apple is clearly happy with. “Since its premiere, audiences have been gripped by the mysteries and twists of ‘Sugar,’ with an incredible performance by Colin Farrell at the center,” said Apple TV+ head of programming Matt Cherniss.
“Colin, Simon Kinberg, Audrey Chon and the entire team behind this series have brilliantly blended genres to create a compelling, can’t-miss series that keeps viewers guessing, and we cannot wait to see where Detective John Sugar finds himself in season two.”
By the way: It’s obviously way too early to be talking about this, since Apple has only just announced the renewal, but we have at least a bare-bones idea of what Season 2 will entail. Sugar didn’t, ah, leave with everyone at the end of Season 1 (I’m trying to be purposefully vague here — if you know, you know), so Season 2 will find him back in Los Angeles, where he’ll take on another missing persons case while also continuing to look for answers surrounding his missing sister.
