Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Smoke, a new Apple TV+ series about an arson investigation, should have been a sure-fire hit, with scripts by seasoned crime writer Dennis Lehane, a star turn from Taron Egerton and an eerie original theme by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. But the nine-part psychological thriller is less a gripping slow-burn than one that only occasionally ignites interest.
Though set in a fictional town and built on all manner of genre tropes, the show is inspired by a true crime podcast called Firebug, which examined a serial arsonist in 1980s southern California. Here the action is moved to the present-day Pacific Northwest, where a couple of twisted (but seemingly unaffiliated) firestarters keep torching buildings and disappearing in the smoke.
With two culprits at large, local investigator Dave Gudsen (Egerton) reluctantly teams up with police detective Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollett). While the former is an ex-firefighter, figuratively and literally burnt out after a near-fatal blaze, the latter has found herself frozen out from the upper echelons of the force following an ill-fated affair with the department chief (Rafe Spall). Initial, inevitable frictions between the two — both proud, both insecure — eventually give way to a rapport founded on shared pain and blithe banter.
So far, so familiar — at least until an early twist threatens to blow up the case. But the fuse Lehane lays down proves much too long, with momentum and intensity soon waning.
The slack pacing is partly offset by a keen sense of style and a moody atmosphere; dynamic performances meanwhile keep up with both narrative turns and a tone that lurches between noirish gloom and hit-and-miss humour. If Smollett brings texture to yet another trauma-hardened detective, then Egerton clearly enjoys the slippery ambiguity of a man who is largely unknowable — and who becomes increasingly unstable as his professional and private ambitions are frustrated.
No longer able to play the hero in real life, Gudsen begins reimagining himself as the swaggering protagonist of a pulpy page-turner that’s ridiculed by his wife and rejected by publishers for its “thin characterisation and stilted dialogue”. Unfortunately there’s a certain unsatisfying irony about a show that sends up pompous prose while presenting us with clunky lines itself.
The hackneyed scripting gets in the way of the show’s well-intentioned attempt at asking what fuels pyromaniacs. A subplot involving one of the arsonists — a lonely, laconic chicken shop worker played by a quietly unsettling Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine — explores how feelings of powerlessness can mutate into a destructive urge. It’s a point Smoke perhaps oversells, but arson is nothing if unsubtle.
★★★☆☆
Episodes 1-2 streaming on June 27 on Apple TV+. New episodes released weekly
Read the full article here