"Whatever you do, whatever you know, however much lifetime wisdom you've accrued, fire puts a lie to it all."
Author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island, The Wire) has reteamed with his Black Bird star Taron Egerton for Smoke, a nine-part series on Apple TV+. The writer and actor are in the best of company: joining them is Jurnee Smollett, best known for Friday Night Lights, True Blood, and Lovecraft Country.
Chances are you'll be spending a lot of time with the three of them in the weeks ahead. This is quite the power trio, and their show has everything you look for in a new flame.
In Smoke, Egerton's fire department investigator Dave Gudsen and Smollett's police detective Michelle Calderone team up to catch two serial arsonists - and both of their careers are at stake. Gudsen has drawn a blank in his work for over a year while Calderone's secondment is effectively a CV-destroying move after an affair with her boss. Things get off to a shaky start between Gudsen and Calderone, but amidst the paperwork, put-downs, and ashes, a partnership begins to take shape.
Gudsen tells Calderone that serial arsonists "tend to be powerless in their own lives", and from the get-go Smoke introduces us to one of them, fast food worker Freddy Fasano, who is excellently played by Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine (Blood Diamond, Heroes, The Lincoln Lawyer).
So, we get Fasano's backstory as Gudsen and Calderone try to put a face to his fires. You'll just have to watch to find out more about the other arsonist.
With great chemistry between Egerton and Smollett, Smoke moves fast and deftly combines the professional and the personal to create one of the more intriguing procedurals of recent telly times. What's above covers the first two instalments, which Apple TV+ has made available now. New ones will follow every Friday until 15 August.
It would be shocking if you weren't all in by the end of episode two...
