Colin Farrell's new detective series Sugar derailed by its twist

Colin Farrell's new detective series Sugar has been slammed for its twist by the critics.

Streaming weekly on Apple TV+, the action finds private investigator John Sugar (Farrell) hired to take on a missing person's case by a Hollywood hotshot producer, whose granddaughter has disappeared. As he attempts to determine what happened to Olivia Siegel, Sugar digs up some dodgy family secrets.

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With many publications now releasing their reviews, it's clear that the Irish actor's work is predictably flawless in the show, yet the earth-shaking twist (which we won't be revealing) halfway through threatens to spoil the whole thing.

Variety wrote: "For most of the show, Sugar comes off as unconvincing wish fulfilment. If Sugar were able to sell its 11th-hour hairpin turn, it would need to earn our buy-in first through a more grounded portrait of a lost, searching soul. Instead, the show feels detached from reality even before it takes a turn for the surreal.

"With the element of surprise used so ineffectively, one wishes Sugar didn't feel the need to disguise itself in the first place. Were the show more open from the start, it would instantly become an intriguing — if not necessarily successful — hybrid of genres, not an unsatisfying take on a familiar one. In its current, disjointed form, Sugar leaves an aftertaste that's far from sweet."

In their report, IndieWire highlighted the many platitudes at play, with a snippet reading: "The nonstop movie references paired with fine performers does almost as much to hold cinephiles' interest as the half-hour episode runtimes, but long before the series rolls its multiple ending titles, there's no saving this stinker. The big twist isn't enough to overcome unwelcome cliches — spare yourself the weightless pontificating about what makes us human and how violence begets violence — but it does make clear that if this project had to be made, the first season should've been condensed into a pilot episode (or even a movie)."

Potentially the most bruising response was this reviewer's preference for True Detective season 2, though, which also starred Farrell and was universally hated back in 2015.

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"The problem isn't that the twist in Sugar doesn't work. It's actually quite intriguing. But almost all of that intrigue will have to wait for a second season, because although the twist is actually the premise of the overall series, the coyness is the point of the first season. And it's that coyness that threatens to kill Sugar, or at least to drain most of the interest from the familiar and frequently bland foregrounded plot," added The Hollywood Reporter.

Thanks to Slate, it's not all doom and gloom for the streamer's latest release. The "restrained" and "melancholic tenderness" of Farrell's turn is apparently something to be enjoyed.

"His Sugar is not just a man of honour but a genuinely good man, something so rare in the lives of the people he meets while searching for Olivia that most of them don't know quite what to make of him. He's the unshowy antidote to every antihero in premium cable TV, proof that decency doesn't have to be boring, especially in a world where it's extremely unusual," they shared.

"Sugar's sweetness is a kind of superpower, a wild card in a world where almost everyone else can be expected to behave badly. That's not the most unusual thing about him, but it's the thing that makes him so much worth watching."

Sugar is streaming on Apple TV+.

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