Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | August 11, 2025
Apple TV+’s Smoke couldn’t have a better pedigree. It comes from novelist and screenwriter Dennis Lehane, best known for writing the books adapted into Shutter Island, Gone Baby Gone, and Mystic River. He’s no stranger to television either, having worked on The Wire, adaptations of Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes and The Outsider, and even an episode of Boardwalk Empire. For Smoke, he’s reteaming with Taron Egerton, the lead from his other Apple TV+ series, Black Bird, which earned four Emmy nominations and won two.
But wow, is Smoke dumb. Producer Seth messaged me over the weekend to say the latest episode “did something so stupid and I was like, ‘what?’ and then it was like, ‘hold my beer, I can go dumber.’” I thought it couldn’t be that bad — until I watched it. It was that dumb. And yet: Goddamn, it’s fun.
It weirdly reminds me of The Accountant, a project Lehane had nothing to do with. There’s nothing similar about the plot or characters, but it provokes the same reaction: This is so dumb. It shouldn’t work. And yet, here we are.
The cast has a lot to do with it, especially Egerton, who plays a far better psychotic prick than I would have guessed. Jurnee Smollett is reliably great, but it’s John Leguizamo and Anna Chlumsky doing most of the scene-stealing, along with Greg Kinnear as the guy you can’t help but root for even after you learn what a screw-up he is.
If you missed our original review, Smoke follows Dave Gudsen (Egerton), an arson investigator who — spoilers — is also setting fires. A few episodes in, his partner Michelle Calderone (Smollett), a detective banished to exile after ending an affair with her married boss (Rafe Spall), figures out that Gudsen is the arsonist torching buildings across the city. But she needs proof, and she has to convince her fire department boss Harvey (Kinnear) that the arsonist has been working right under his nose.
Eventually, Calderone knows Gudsen’s guilty, Gudsen knows she knows, and they taunt each other while keeping up the charade as partners. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, only the cat and mouse are trapped in the same cage. I originally thought this was only a six-episode series — Calderone had basically solved the mystery by episode six — but now we’re just riding the friction, waiting to see which one screws up first.
Spoiler: it’s both. In fact, everyone on this show is a dirtbag, even the most sympathetic (like Leguizamo’s Ezra, an alcoholic making ends meet by shooting revenge p*rn after getting fired as Gudsen’s partner). Even Calderone, the ostensible protagonist, makes some … interesting choices.
And it’s those “interesting” choices that fuel the back half of the season. You’ll shake your head at the absurdity, but for pure entertainment value, it’s tough to beat. Egerton, Smollett, and Leguizamo may deserve Emmys purely for keeping this runaway train on the tracks as the ridiculousness ramps up. It’s not a great show, but it’s watchable as all hell.
