Aliens from outer space come in basically two kinds. The first are murderous invaders that need to be destroyed — think Alien or Predator. In more complex stories like The Man Who Fell to Earth or Arrival, the E.T.s don't come to wreak havoc, but to engage with our world, often discovering what it means to be human.
The latter is what you get in Sugar, the seductive Apple TV series whose second season is now unfolding. Here, the alien, played by a terrific Colin Farrell, doesn't merely travel between planets, but between genres. He learns to be human by becoming a private eye in Los Angeles. Or maybe a fantasy of a private eye, one who tools around LA in a vintage Corvette Stingray, sports immaculately tailored suits and has a spirit so pure he makes Philip Marlowe seem sinister. Wrapping noir inside science fiction, or maybe the other way around, Sugar injects fresh feeling into storylines that have grown more than a little musty.
Sugar's first season was nearly impossible to review because its shocking reveal — that private detective John Sugar is actually from another planet — didn't come until episode 6, so late you couldn't intelligently discuss the series without spoiling it. In its final episode, we learned that Sugar is part of a team of aliens sent to Earth to monitor and observe, but they've been betrayed and must flee our planet to avoid being killed. Sugar stays behind.
In Season 2, cut off from his home planet, he's back to detective work. Where the first season's client was a Hollywood mogul, this new one moves us into the LA of the powerless. Sugar takes the case of aspiring boxer Danny Moon, played by Jin Ha, a Korean immigrant who wants him to find his missing brother, who has dangerous men on his tail.
Sugar quickly finds himself faced with Latino street gangs and a dirty cop named Vega, played with menacingly placid amusement by Tony Dalton, who you may know as the psycho Lalo Salamanca in Better Call Saul. Clearly needing help, Sugar hires a streetwise assistant, played by Sasha Calle, and calls in favors from his scruffy police pal, slyly played by Shea Whigham. Naturally, there's also a mysterious woman, Charlotte — the wonderful Irish actress Laura Donnelly — who just as naturally has eyes for Sugar. Heck, he's Colin Farrell.
As part of his interplanetary mission, Sugar has been ordered not to assimilate. Eat no meat, have no sex, don't kill anybody. But as the story progresses — with the amoral Vega looking unstoppable and Charlotte coming on pretty darn sexy, we wonder if he'll be corrupted into violating those taboos.
The late, great David Lynch said that what drew him into a story was a mood, a mental atmosphere he wanted to be inside. I get that in Sugar, with its riffs on genres I love, its undertow of city-lights melancholy and the way Sugar's alienness puts a spin on everything, from the heightened way LA is shot to his philosophical ruminations on existence.
Sugar learned about Earth by watching old pictures like Casablanca — he's now a film buff — and one of the show's stylistic trademarks is to cut in clips from black-and-white movies that echo what he's experiencing in the story. Even when this technique feels a bit mannered, these clips remind us that Sugar often approaches life through the mythologizing of the Hollywood dream machine. Rather like us, come to think of it.
It's one of the best science fiction clichés that aliens often possess more humanity than human beings. The empathetic Sugar certainly does, whether he's quietly washing the dishes for the grandmother of a murder victim, believing villains would go straight if only they could, seeing himself in LA's uprooted immigrants and unhoused people, or reacting in horror at how heartlessly the dispossessed are treated. "This city breaks your heart," he tells us.
One of the very best things about the show is that, like its hero, it isn't cynical.
While we might mock a human detective for being so un-hard-boiled, Farrell wins us over with the subtlety and charm we expect from his performances. Deploying his charisma with great discretion, he gives us a Sugar who may look like a perfectly cool detective, but whose interactions have an earnest, awkward, off-kilter honesty that gives every scene an offbeat twirl.
In fact, one of the very best things about the show is that, like its hero, it isn't cynical. Sugar lives in the elegant Hotel del Corazon — the Hotel of the Heart — and this seems just right. Far, far from home, John Sugar is a lonely soul, lost in space but forever trying to do the right thing.
Copyright 2026 NPR
