‘Smoke' review: This slow-burner is just another cop show – until it suddenly isn't

Irish Independent

24-06-2025

In the case of nine-part miniseries Smoke (Apple TV+, streaming from Friday, June 27), that temptation is strong. It's a slow-burner, at least initially, that sometimes seems to be testing the audience's tolerance for well-worn genre clichés.
It gives us not one, but two troubled protagonists weighed down by hefty personal baggage, as well as a voiceover so cheesy you could serve it on a cracker.
Mind you, this turns out to be bits of a novel one of them is trying to write, so the badness is deliberate and fulfils a deeper purpose.
If you feel the urge to bail out early, resist it, otherwise you might be missing out on something very special.
I say 'might' because all I've watched are the first two episodes, but they end up packing the kind of unexpected wallop that leaves you craving more (binge addicts will have to wait for the rest to drop weekly).
Smoke comes with a glittering pedigree. Creator Dennis Lehane, who wrote or co-wrote half the episodes, reunites with Taron Egerton, the star of his earlier Apple triumph, the brilliant miniseries Black Bird.
Egerton's co-star is Jurnee Smollett, who was terrific in the regrettably short-lived Lovecraft Country. The support cast includes Rafe Spall and two great old pros whose presence is always welcome: Greg Kinnear and John Leguizamo.
Egerton plays Dave Gudsen, a firefighter who became an arson investigator after a terrifying brush with death in a blazing building
Egerton plays Dave Gudsen, a firefighter who became an arson investigator after a terrifying brush with death in a blazing building. He's haunted by nightmares about the experience, yet retains an outwardly cheery demeanour for his wife Ashley (Hannah Emily Anderson) and her son Emmett (Luke Roessler) from her previous marriage.
Not that the boy cares much. He resents Gudsen's presence and rebuffs his attempts at bonding. Has he seen a side of his apparently amiable stepfather that nobody else has?
Gudsen is chasing two unrelated serial arsonists who are lighting fires around the fictional Pacific Northwest town of Umberland. One of them lights milk jugs full of accelerant on the porches of innocent, unsuspecting people late at night.
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The other brazenly lights fires in grocery stores while they're still open, always placing the incendiary device among the potato chips. Maybe salty snacks burn faster.
The speed at which the fires spread is properly terrifying, and the depiction of the horrific burns the victims suffer is definitely not for the squeamish.
After months of dead ends, emotionally closed-off detective and former Marine, Michelle Calderone (Smollett), is brought on board, reluctantly, to assist with the investigation.
Her reluctance might stem from the fact that she, too, as shown in fleeting flashbacks, had a bad experience with fire as a child.
For reasons not yet clear, Calderone's career has stalled, so she desperately needs the shot at redemption her temporary partnership with Gudsen offers. After an initial wariness of one another, the two begin to forge a good working relationship.
Lehane tips his hand early on by revealing the identity of one of the arsonists
Lehane tips his hand early on by revealing the identity of one of the arsonists. The milk jug man is a middle-aged African-American called Freddy Fasano (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine). Freddy, who's almost paralysingly shy and speaks in a barely audible mumble, works as a cook at a fast-food chicken joint.
It's an extraordinary performance by Mwine, who has you sympathising with Freddy one moment, then unnerved by the euphoric joy he takes from watching a fire raging through the house of a young couple with a baby.
Meanwhile, Gudsen and Calderone suspect the other arsonist could be an arrogant firefighter called Stanton (David James Lewis), who always seemed to be absent for work on the dates the grocery store fires were lit.
Just as it seems ready to settle into a standard cat-and-mouse thriller, Smoke executes a humdinger of a handbrake turn in the final scene that changes everything we've seen up to that point.
A word of warning: Smoke is inspired by a true crime podcast called Firebug (which was the drama's working title). If you don't want the surprise ruined, don't even look it up.
Rating: Four stars