‘Smoke’ Review (Apple TV)
Stars: Taron Egerton, Jurnee Smollett, Rafe Spall, Hannah Emily Anderson, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Greg Kinnear, John Leguizamo | Created by Dennis Lehane
Apple TV’s Smoke, from novelist-turned-showrunner Dennis Lehane, arrives with all the hallmarks of prestige TV: moody cinematography, slow-burn pacing, and brimming with self-importance. But peel back the layers of cinematic gloss, and you’re left with a show that mistakes aesthetic fog for narrative depth. This is a series that desperately wants to be profound, yet ends up suffocating under the weight of its own pretension.
Set in the mist-shrouded forests of the Pacific Northwest, Smoke follows an arson investigator and a detective as they hunt for a pair of serial fire-starters. On paper, the premise sounds gripping: an atmospheric crime thriller with psychological depth. In practice, though, the show is more interested in gazing at its own “smoke trails” than in telling a compelling story. Every episode is loaded with brooding silences, poetic monologues, and visual symbolism so heavy-handed it borders on parody.
From the first scene, it’s clear this is a show obsessed with looking important. The cinematography is striking, awash in shadow and ash, with perfectly composed frames that wouldn’t look out of place in an arthouse film. The music swells ominously at just the right moments. The characters speak in loaded half-sentences and riddles, pausing for long, reflective stares out of windows. Everything is beautifully designed to suggest meaning, but it rarely delivers anything tangible.
The performances, led by a restrained Taron Egerton and an underused Jurnee Smollett, are often lost in the show’s overbearing atmosphere. It’s not that the actors aren’t doing their jobs; they’re just working with scripts that value abstraction over connection. Characters feel like archetypes more than people, and by the time the story reveals its big twists, the emotional investment has already burned out.
Worse still, Smoke seems terrified of clarity. It dances around its themes – trauma, guilt, obsession – without ever confronting them head-on. Instead, it leans on ambiguity as a crutch, drawing out plot developments with a sluggish pace that mistakes vagueness for sophistication. The end result is a show that feels less like a mystery unravelling and more like a fog machine set on high.
There’s no doubt Smoke is impeccably produced. It has the polish, the mood, and the ambition of a great drama. But ambition without focus becomes indulgence. And Smoke, for all its style, is ultimately an empty experience, one that smoulders impressively, but never truly ignites.
Episodes 1 and 2 of Smoke are available to watch on Apple TV now.
