Colin Farrell plays a P.I. with the strangest of secrets in 'Sugar' Season 2

NO TRANSCRIPT OF ROBERT KIMBALL SECTION

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Netflix is presenting a new version of "Little House On The Prairie," based on the popular series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. All eight episodes of Season 1 are now available to stream, and Netflix already has ordered a Season 2. It's a story from our nation's early frontier history and has quite a history of its own in print and even on television.

When Laura Ingalls Wilder started writing her "Little House On The Prairie" book series in the early 1930s, it was as a fond salute to her own childhood memories. Laura was born shortly after the Civil War in 1867 in the very log cabin she describes in her first book, "Little House In The Big Woods." That book, and her later ones, detailed the joys, the difficulties and the hard work involved in pioneer life, as seen and told from the perspective of a precocious young girl. Laura loved her ma and pa and her siblings, but she observed them all carefully and perceptively. She was to "Little House On The Prairie" what John-Boy was to "The Waltons," another nostalgic family TV series set during an earlier time - in that case, the Depression.

The characters of both John-Boy and Laura displayed a gift for writing early on and narrated their family's stories. When Michael Landon, after spending years as Little Joe on "Bonanza," brought "Little House On The Prairie" to NBC in the 1970s, he cast himself as the patriarch, Pa Ingalls. But the storytelling, as in the books, belonged to little Laura, played in that series by a young Melissa Gilbert.

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MELISSA GILBERT: (As Laura Ingalls) If I had a remembrance book, I would mark down how it was when we left our little house in the big woods to go west to Indian territory.

BIANCULLI: That "Little House" series was very popular and ran from 1974 to 1983. Especially in the early episodes, it was faithful to the original books and characters. When an Osage Indian chief came by the Ingalls' cabin, Pa invited him in for a sit and a smoke. Ma was frightened, as was Laura's elder sister, and was relieved when he left. But Laura was charmed and sympathetic to his tribe's plight. What Laura says in that 1974 premiere may sound like liberal Hollywood rewriting, but the empathic dialogue, like much of the TV series, came straight from the original books.

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KAREN GRASSLE: (As Caroline Ingalls) Thank goodness he's gone.

MICHAEL LANDON: (As Charles Ingalls) Why? I thought it was kind of nice.

GRASSLE: (As Caroline Ingalls) For an Indian.

LANDON: (As Charles Ingalls) Well, I wouldn't be upset about it. A few months from now, there won't be an Indian left in the territory.

GILBERT: (As Laura Ingalls) But why not, Pa?

LANDON: (As Charles Ingalls) The government's going to make them move, Half Pint.

GILBERT: (As Laura Ingalls) Move where?

LANDON: (As Charles Ingalls) West, I guess.

MELISSA SUE ANDERSON: (As Mary Ingalls) I'm glad.

GILBERT: (As Laura Ingalls) I'm not. Does Soldat du Chene have to go too, even though he's a chief?

LANDON: (As Charles Ingalls) I'm afraid so.

GILBERT: (As Laura Ingalls) It's not fair. They were here first.

BIANCULLI: The new incarnation of "Little House On The Prairie" is created for TV by Rebecca Sonnenshine. Her writing credits include episodes of the TV series "The Boys" and "The Vampire Diaries." She and the show's other writers, as well as the directors, take some liberties with their new version. They introduce an entire family of Osage characters, for example, to present another set of family dynamics. One thing they don't mess with, though, is Laura as the central voice. She's played here by Alice Halsey, whom you may remember as the brilliant daughter on "Lessons In Chemistry," and her performance is the show's very best, a show that starts, as before, with Laura's opening narration.

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ALICE HALSEY: (As Laura Ingalls) Once upon a time, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura left their house in the big woods of Wisconsin. Ma was sad to leave her life behind, but Pa said it was getting too crowded, and we needed a fresh start in the West. Every day, the horses traveled as far as they could, and Pa and Ma made camp in a new place.

BIANCULLI: Warren Christie is another standout. He plays John Edwards, a Civil War veteran and sometimes drunken loner, who agrees to help the Ingalls build their log cabin before winter sets in. Charles - that's Pa, to Laura - likes him, but Caroline - that's Ma - fears him as much as she does the Osage and sends him away. Luke Bracy plays Pa, and Crosby Fitzgerald plays Caroline.

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CROSBY FITZGERALD: (As Caroline Ingalls) He's not coming back.

LUKE BRACEY: (As Charles Ingalls) What?

FITZGERALD: (As Caroline Ingalls) He was drinking, here at our home. He said he didn't do it while you work, but I didn't believe him.

BRACEY: (As Charles Ingalls) What did you say?

FITZGERALD: (As Caroline Ingalls) I told him not to come back until he didn't need something to chase the ship...

BRACEY: (As Charles Ingalls) Doesn't work like that. You don't just snap your fingers and make it go away. His wife is gone. His girls are gone. He got chewed up and spit out by the godforsaken war.

FITZGERALD: (As Caroline Ingalls) You knew? You knew and you didn't say anything?

BRACEY: (As Charles Ingalls) Caroline, we are alone at sea. We don't have room for this obsession with virtue.

FITZGERALD: (As Caroline Ingalls) It's not virtue. I don't want to lose my family again.

BRACEY: (As Charles Ingalls) We can't finish this house without him.

BIANCULLI: Their argument is intense, but as filmed, there's something off about it. Like many other scenes in this new "Little House On The Prairie," it's shot by handheld cameras in extreme close-up and calls too much attention to itself. Also, some of the dramatic plot points that worked so well in the books and in the NBC series are less effective here because they're not established or presented as well. The familiar title of "Little House On The Prairie" may bring lots of viewers to this new version, but I can't say it really resonates, except for the performances of Alice Halsey as Laura and Warren Christie as Mr. Edwards. But I will say that the entire original series of "Little House On The Prairie" is available to stream on Peacock. And when I dove back in there to refresh my memory, that series really did resonate.

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BIANCULLI: Coming up, critic-at-large John Powers reviews the new season of "Sugar," starring Colin Farrell as a private eye with a secret - quite a secret. This is FRESH AIR.

DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: This is FRESH AIR. The Apple TV series "Sugar" stars Colin Farrell as John Sugar, an LA private eye with the strangest of secrets. Its second season is currently being released and finds him seeking a missing person in areas of Los Angeles you won't find in the tourist brochures. Our critic-at-large, John Powers, says that "Sugar" has a strange, starry-eyed allure that he found irresistible.

JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: 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 ETs 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. Now, "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 learn 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 - she's 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. Here, you sense temptation coming when he first meets Charlotte in a bar.

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LAURA DONNELLY: (As Charlotte Fischer) Hello.

COLIN FARRELL: (As John Sugar) Hi.

DONNELLY: (As Charlotte Fischer) I don't mean it as - have we met before?

FARRELL: (As John Sugar) I don't think so.

DONNELLY: (As Charlotte Fischer) Zurich, the sustainability conference. That wasn't you?

FARRELL: (As John Sugar) No, no.

DONNELLY: (As Charlotte Fischer) My mistake.

FARRELL: (As John Sugar) Not at all. John Sugar.

DONNELLY: (As Charlotte Fischer) Sugar. Like, what, sweet?

FARRELL: (As John Sugar) I suppose.

DONNELLY: (As Charlotte Fischer) I'm Charlotte.

FARRELL: (As John Sugar) Like the web.

DONNELLY: (As Charlotte Fischer) Like the spider's web.

POWERS: 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 cliches 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.

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.

BIANCULLI: John Powers reviewed "Sugar," starring Colin Farrell, now in its second season on Apple TV.

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BIANCULLI: In the new comedy film "The Invite," an unhappily married couple invite the couple upstairs over for an uncomfortable and revelatory dinner party. On Monday's show, the film's screenwriters, Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. They're longtime writing and producing partners, as well as actors. Hope you can join us.

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support from Julian Herzfeld and Charlie Kaier. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.

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