Feeling the Heat

Apple TV+ crime drama Smoke brings fire, chaos and ugly truths that can’t be outrun

- by JANEÉ BOLDEN

FIRE IS AT THE CENTER OF SMOKE, APPLE TV+'S searing new crime drama, but the blaze that matters most is internal. Created by bestselling author and screenwriter Dennis Lehane (Black Bird, Mystic River), the show sets an arson investigator, a troubled detective and two elusive firebugs on a collision course with their pasts—and themselves.

Premiering June 27 with a two-episode drop, it follows Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) reluctantly working alongside recently demoted detective Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollett) to track two serial arsonists in the Pacific Northwest town of Umberland. The deeper they dig, the more combustible everything becomes—in the case and their psyches. Strong performances from John Leguizamo, Greg Kinnear and Anna Chlumsky add layers of tension, charm or unease. “I told the writers from the jump, ‘Let's blow the doors off this,” Lehane tells Newsweek. “This show is about chaos—emotional chaos, psychological chaos, world chaos. We're living in a very chaotic era. So, why pretend otherwise?”

Smoke refuses to offer easy heroes or stock villains; the characters live in the murky, morally compromised middle. “Every now and then, you meet a saint. Every now and then, you meet a villain,” Lehane says. “But most of us? We're just trying to figure it out. And that’s who I write.”

Michelle is brilliant and intuitive but brimming with anger and childhood trauma. Charismatic Dave is hiding something dark. Freddy Fasano (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), who works quietly in fast food, reveals a pain so raw it hums under every scene he's in.