Smoke starts off poorly. The Apple TV+ thriller, burdened with procedural clichés, follows an odd-couple law-enforcement team pursuing two prolific arsonists. Dave Gudsen () is an arson investigator with a distant stepson and aspirations of becoming a writer. His new partner is police detective Michelle Calderone (), an ex-Marine who is involved with a superior officer. Initial friction gives way to drunken camaraderie. Pretentious stylistic choices worsen the uninspired setup. Episodes begin with title cards displaying dictionary definitions of relevant words like transmogrification and, for some reason, fury. There are artsy shots of large, billowing fires. A melancholic song plays during the credits. In voiceover, Dave amateurishly expounds on fire’s destructive power.
After two excessively long episodes, a major plot twist reorients the series, eliminating some of its most egregious flaws and providing context for others. Smoke then becomes watchable. Yet, as it deviates from one set of obvious tropes, it embraces others that, while less annoying, are nearly as predictable. An emerging critique of aggrieved white male aggression primarily comes across as a superficial attempt at topical relevance.
Like many disappointing Apple TV+ projects, from ’s Roar to , the series prioritizes big names over actual quality. , it was developed by one of Hollywood’s celebrated authors, (, ), who also served on the writing staff of and directed Apple’s well-received 2022 miniseries Black Bird. The cast includes , Greg Kinnear, and . Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, a standout in and , brings a delicate authenticity to the challenging yet crucial role of a troubled fast-food worker.
However, the actors are poorly served by the script. Kinnear is miscast as the detectives’ folksy, self-satisfied boss. Leguizamo’s character is overly sleazy, and Chlumsky’s is too bland. At the forefront of the narrative, Michelle is an outdated “Strong Female Character” with an overly sentimental history of trauma. Egerton, an executive producer, plays a role so adaptable, and so clearly designed to create nine episodes worth of cliffhangers, that it barely holds together.
Populated by unstable men and self-sacrificing women, and punctuated by fiery, increasingly dramatic set pieces, Smoke fails to reconcile its mood of noirish nihilism with its attempts at social commentary. Despite pretending to be subversive, Lehane has produced a typical—overly long, filled with caricatures, easy to watch but also easy to forget—streaming crime show.
