It’s been a fascinating year so far for TV-sized riffs on Los Angeles noir, with multiple series moving these archetypal stories forward in time while experimenting with how many of their throwback elements can remain intact. In “Monsieur Spade,” Clive Owen played a later-in-life version of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, relocated to the South of France in the early ‘60s. Now the Apple TV+ series “Sugar,” created by screenwriter Mark Protosveich, brings the genre all the way up to the present — maybe in some ways into the future — through a hero who constantly looks back.
John Sugar (Colin Farrell) doesn’t particularly embody an older, tougher style of masculinity to match his crisp threads and gorgeous blue convertible.