Colin Farrell is ‘Sugar’, a melee with the best of Humphrey Bogart

Playing fairy tales is possible and in this case the fairy tale consists in recreating in current times – with the use of smartphones, for example, even in the most sophisticated ways – a Philip Marlowe or a Sam Spade and make him move around Los Angeles just as those two would have moved todaythe. To try you need to have at least one star, which is Colin Farrellprotagonist of Sugar, series just landed on Apple TV+, two episodes available, out of eight. The game is captivating indeed: private detective, with Bondian traits and melancholy plus terrible existential wounds.

He moves in luxury but cares very little about it, except for the convertible Corvette that he uses to get around and to host new friends – a wolf dog left without an owner. Sugar because that’s his surname, and the decisive trait is that of being a first-class cinephile, passionate about the golden age of black and white. Which allows continuous inserts with the Bogart of the time, moments in which Sugar mimes those memorable scenes or otherwise draws inspiration from those models. He is, obviously, a champion at work and is not enchanted by anything or anyone. Furthermore, he is as good as bread, in his soul, no matter how life continues to play against him. The plot sees him busy finding a girl, Olivia, a drug addict and drifter, niece of a very powerful Hollywood producer (played by James Cromwellmemorable as in Succession and even more). Sugar it’s a sort of melee engaged in with fans of the hard-boiled/vintage crime genre: either you give up immediately, deciding that the game is worth it, or you cry posthumous and avoidable plagiarism, as well as being too quotable and insistent. But with the first option you have much more fun.

***

RaiPlay, a public service platform, is full of valuable, high-quality things that are neglected in normal programming. And first-rate television memorabilia. In any case, when the ranking of the things most searched for by users appears, the sentence does not allow for discussion: in the lead is Il Ladies’ paradise.