Apple TV+ loves to keep viewers on edge and often releases new shows one episode per week, so you don't have to binge-watch everything in one sleepless night. So it took the platform almost two months to publish the nine-episode "Smoke." The series was created by screenwriter and author Dennis Legain, author of popular crime novels. He is best known for, among other things, "Shutter Island," which Martin Scorsese adapted into a 2010 thriller with Leonardo DiCaprio. The main character of "Smoke," or rather, one of them, currently an arson investigator and former firefighter Dave Gadsen, was played by actor Taron Egerton. If the duo "Leighane + Edgerton" seemed familiar, it's no wonder: a few years ago, the same platform released the six-part "Black Bird" by the same author, where Theron played Jimmy Keane, a small-time drug dealer with big ambitions. The duo showed themselves brightly, "Black Bird" was liked by viewers and critics. But did "Smoke" manage to repeat this success? We'll figure it out.
| Name | Smoke |
| Genre | thriller, detective, psychological drama |
| Showrunner | Dennis Legain |
| Cast | Taron Egerton, Jurnee Smollett, Ralph Spall, Hannah Emily Anderson, Ntare Mwine, Greg Kinnear, John Leguizamo, Luke Rossler, Mishka Tebow and others |
| Number of episodes | 9 |
| Year | 2025 |
| Platform | Apple TV+ |
| Link | IMDb |
Smoke is set in the fictional town of Amberland. The town is fictional, but the plot is partly based on a very real story, the Firebug podcast, which told the story of serial arsonist John Leonard Orr. We won't retell it, because it would be a major spoiler.
So, in Amberland, two serial arsonists are at work at once. One is a fan of strange rituals in supermarkets and chips. Although, more likely, he is their hater, because it is on the departments with dry snacks that his anger in the form of fire constantly falls. The identity of the first arsonist is unknown to the viewer from the beginning. But the second one is given to us right away.
This is an unfortunate eccentric named Freddy Fasano, played on screen by Ntare Mwine, with a lush "african" on his head. He works diligently at a chicken fast food and really wants to become a manager. But for this role he is too strange and seems to have minor but noticeable developmental disabilities. Quiet and calm at work, Freddy is offended by the whole world, and burns down the houses of random people who seem too happy to him.
Arson investigator Dave Goodsen is hunting the criminals. He has been unable to catch these two for a long time, although it seems that he is literally breathing down their backs. So, to help Dave, detective Michelle Calderon (Jurnee Smollett) is thrown in - a stern woman with a traumatic past. She looks like a checklist of a "strong heroine" from the series. She is both a fighter (she went through military operations), and sleeps with her boss, and is strong, and has childhood traumas, which, by coincidence, are also connected with fire. And with her mother, where without maternal trauma in psychodrama. And before us is precisely psychodrama, even if this is not immediately clear.
The pilot episode of Smoke begins in a rather unusual way: Dave is trying to come up with the first lines for his book about fires, arsonists, and those who fight them. And this scene turns out to be much more important than it seems at first glance. It immediately reveals several layers of the character: eccentricity, ambition, narcissism, obsession with fire, and at the same time the desire to turn his own life into artistic material.
After the fire, Dave decided to leave his job at the fire station and join the police. We are not only an arson investigator, but also the author of a myth about himself: fiction and reality are intertwined, and we are dealing with a not very reliable narrator. After all, when a narcissist talks about himself, it is worth dividing all his words at least in half.
And, as is often the case, the narcissist is not too happy about the appearance of a "competing partner" who could potentially steal some of the attention from his life scene. At this stage, it generally seems that we have fallen into a classic buddy cop series: two different detectives who initially bicker, but over time find a common language and begin to work as a perfect mechanism.
Usually Dave enjoys attention, likes to give overly theatrical lectures to colleagues from different departments, exaggerates his own attractiveness and constantly proves something to himself and others. At home, the situation is even more complicated: his wife, a librarian, is not very happy with him, and Dave does not get along at all with his teenage stepson. This adds even more internal tension to the hero: he tries to build an image of a charismatic hero on the outside, but in his own family it does not work at all.
New partner Michelle Calderon also carries a trauma related to fire: as a child, she was almost burned alive at the hands of her own mother, now incarcerated. This past has made her sharp, straightforward and hardened, but at the same time it creates another interesting contrast in the pair: if Dave tries to make a romance out of fire, then for Michelle it is a painful experience that she cannot forget. And between them from the very beginning there is tension: it is not only a competition for professional supremacy, but also a clash of two very different ways of experiencing their own traumas.
But very quickly the illusion of a genre "detective pair" in "Smoke" is shattered. The plot reveals the identity of one of the smokers quite early on (although an attentive viewer, to be honest, would have guessed it earlier), and from that moment on the story turns into more of a thriller, slowly slipping into a psychodrama.
We get the opportunity to observe two arsonists at once – and how different they are! One is a lonely loser who no one hears. The other is a predatory psychopath who hides his disorders behind the majestic mask of the elements. The parallel between the chaos that uncontrolled flames bring into our lives and the chaos of a sick human psyche works quite strongly, although the idea itself is far from new. But in Smoke it is reinforced by another important detail: not only arsonists, but also those who persecute them, have their own internal fires. Gradually it becomes obvious that each of the key characters has skeletons in the closet.
That is, there are no perfectly positive heroes here. Everyone goes to the dark side from time to time. Someone trivially takes bribes, someone drinks and manipulates people, and someone accidentally becomes a murderer. And this makes "Smoke" feel a little more honest than a classic procedural detective, because there are no heroes here who you want to admire without reservations.
At some point, a group of adventurers is formed who try to "expose" the arsonist. It looks parodic in some places, even funny in others, and again reminds us of a genre game: we are faced with a serious thriller, then an almost black comedy. And here the show comes to life for a while.
Much of the credit for this goes to John Leguizamo as Ezra Esposito, a retired, drunken cop. This smart-ass hunk steals a lot of scenes: his quick tongue, unpredictable behavior, and lively charm add the energy that the rest of the characters lack. Good acting, although the character himself deserves more attention.
It's a pleasure to watch Greg Kinnear as the sweet boss Dave. Kinnear plays with the same sincerity for which he has always been loved, but gradually reveals some of the darker sides of his character.
Theron Edgerton plays the role faithfully, but due to the excessive eccentricity of his character, it is not always clear whether we are seeing good acting or just strange behavior of the character. Ntare Mwine is, on the contrary, one of the strongest elements of the series. His paly evokes sympathy and fear at the same time, and the interrogation scene sometimes acquires an almost mystical sound - somewhere between Shutter Island and even the disturbing absurdity of Twin Peaks.
Visually, Smoke looks beautiful: slow angles, a blue-green palette that seems to deliberately "muffle" the flames so that we look more at the people, not the special effects. The fires are filmed without excessive pathos, but with a sense of scale and threat.
The biggest minus, in my opinion, is the somewhat choppy rhythm. The series sometimes delves into psychological dramas, then falls apart into side plot branches that could easily be thrown out without harming the story. The female characters are poorly written: Dave's wife remains a cliché of "eternal dissatisfaction", and Michelle is a standard "strong woman" without enough individuality. This is surprising especially because there was potential for more.
The finale leaves a double impression. It seems as if the writers themselves are not sure whether the story will continue, so they left a gap for the second season, but in such a way that in case of something, they could leave it as it is. And the finale has several, in my opinion, wonderful moments that artistically reveal the essence of the plot.
In the end, "Smoke" is not so much a fascinating detective story as a mixture of genres, where narcissistic outbursts, psychopathy, black humor, family dramas and mystical subtext coexist. This mixture sometimes works, sometimes falls apart. So the series leaves a mixed impression: it is interesting and atmospheric, but does not always keep up the pace and does not fully realize its own potential. For some, it will be a fresh and atypical spectacle, for others - a disappointment.