Sugar and the Shadowy History of L.A. Noir on the Small Screen

Sugar, Apple TV+’s mysterious new crime drama, is steeped in film noir history, and especially films set in Los Angeles. L.A. is the definitive noir city because it’s sexy, dangerous, and full of disillusioned people with broken dreams. Some of the greatest noir films from every era of Hollywood—from The Big Sleep to Chinatown to Drive—are set in the City of Angels. 

Sugar stars Colin Farrell as John Sugar, a present-day private investigator who loves working in Los Angeles because he’s obsessed with movies. He subscribes to Cahiers du Cinema and Sight & Sound, and he’s starstruck when he takes a job working for movie producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell), whose granddaughter has gone missing. Sugar sees himself as an L.A. private eye in the image of Humphrey Bogart’s Philip Marlowe. The show underlines Sugar’s noir obsession by cutting in footage from The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, and other cinematic images of Los Angeles of yesteryear. The inserts create a feeling of living history, that the streets Sugar drives down are the same ones that belonged to Bogey and Bacall. 

It’s a curious twist that Sugar, a TV show, pays homage to L.A. noir cinema. Because, while Sugar doesn’t actually acknowledge the small screen in its big screen references, the series also exists as part of a long lineage of L.A. noir television. L.A. noir TV is much less distinguished and historically significant than its theatrical counterpart. But as a genre, its appeal is so irresistible that producers have been trying to capture it on television for decades.

The earliest show that can be considered L.A. noir is 77 Sunset Strip, which ran from 1958 to 1964 and was one of the most popular shows of its era. It stars Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Roger Smith as private detectives investigating cases in Hollywood. Though it started out as a grittier crime drama in the vein of New York-set Naked City, which premiered two weeks earlier, it evolved into a lighter show featuring Edd Byrnes as Kookie, a jive-talking hepcat who worked as the building’s parking lot attendant before eventually becoming a P.I. himself. It’s pretty far from The Big Sleep, but it established the Los Angeles private investigator as a lasting TV archetype. 

Private eyes were huge on TV in the 1970s and 1980s, and there were a ton of shows about detectives-for-hire in Los Angeles. Some are fondly remembered (Mannix, Moonlighting), and some have faded to obscurity (City of Angels, Harry O). The most enduring noirish one is The Rockford Files, which stars James Garner (who had previously starred in an early attempt to revive Philip Marlowe, 1969’s Marlowe) as Jim Rockford, a perpetually down-on-his-luck cold case P.I. Rockford lives in a junky old trailer on the beach in Malibu and spends his days solving crimes and ducking creditors. He’s not as cynical as Philip Marlowe, but he’s good with a one-liner and is willing to bend the rules to achieve his goals. Like John Sugar, Rockford is a friendly guy who dislikes hurting people, and each series leans into their humanity. 

L.A. noir TV receded in the 1990s, but came back in a big way in the antihero era of the early 2000s with The Shield, FX’s classic crime drama about corrupt LAPD officer Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis). Cable’s willingness to embrace darker and grittier material than had previously been seen on TV allowed The Shield’s noir themes of moral ambiguity and institutional rot to reach their fullest potential. The Shield is the most creatively successful noir-influenced TV show set in Los Angeles. If it were about a private eye, it would be the perfect L.A. noir show.