Spoiler alert: The following piece contains the details of the intrigue of the first two episodes of “Smoke”, in difficulty on Apple TV +.
Three years ago, the crime writer Dennis Lehane and actor Taron Egerton joined forces with “Black Bird”, an Apple TV + series that adapted the true story of the infiltrated infiltrator James Keene in a disturbing and tender version of masculinity. “Black Bird” was well received, winning critical praise and a trio of actor’s appointments to the Emmy, including a posthumous head sign for Ray Liotta as Keene’s father. But while Egerton was excellent because a career criminal brought face to face the ugly extreme of his own undisputed machismo, the more seeing role went to Paul Walter Hauser, who played a slowly acute serial killer in a confession and finally brought the trophy for an exceptional support player.
Egerton and Lehane have now gathered for “Smoke”, another real crime program that explores criminal psychology with a strange atmosphere and a star cast. As the title suggests, “Smoke” moves Lehane’s attention to the world of the criminal fire, turning a thread of nine episodes on a criminal fire investigator (EGERTON) and a police detective (Smollett jurnee) who has teamed up to catch some fires in the northwest of the Pacific. The fictitious city of Umberland, a kind of Seattle substitution with cute neighborhood names like “Trolleytown”, is played by the real city of Vancouver, a frequent filming hub whose lush forests are overhauled here as a dangerous fuel.
“Smoke” is intriguing enough throughout the first two episodes. Dave Gudsen d’Egerton is a former puree and budding novelist, allowing Lehane to make fun of the tropes (thin female characters, clumsy prose) in his chosen field. Michelle Calderon de Smollett is a presence of steel and targeted, although predictable, with a trauma linked to fire and a badly informed affair with her boss, the police captain Steven Burke (Rafe Spall). But it is a twist at the end of the second episode which launches “smoke” at the high speed and reveals what the show really does.
I included a spoiler alert at the top of this criticism, and I will repeat the same feeling here. The revelation in question is more a delayed premise than a late carpet traction, and with the first two games of the season of nine episodes available for free to broadcast, it is technically a game just to discuss. (A superficial Google of the “Firebug” podcast already reveals the concept that has clearly attracted Lehane to the material.) Torsion is also a delicious surprise to live in the moment, so I allow readers to decide by themselves how much they would like to know. Proceed!
“Smoke” follows one of the two incendiaries of Dave and Michelle’s Sights from the start: Freddy (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), a chicken boutique cook whose slow and interrupted speech and the desire to put the houses of apparently happy foreigners on fire seem to come from a kind of mental disability. (The incendiary device of Freddy of choice is a milk jug filled with oil – not exactly sophisticated stuff.) But although Freddy obtains his own scenario on an attempt to improve that goes disastrous, the other fire fire remains anonymous beyond a strange propensity for the aisle of the potatoes of various grocery stores. Until Dave presents himself in a disturbing argument with his wife and stepson. He leaves the house and “smokes” follows him in a supermarket, feigning a soft and covering himself with a hood and sunglasses.
This development transforms “smoke” into an exciting cat and mouse game, which does not insult Michelle’s intelligence by keeping it in the dark much longer than the public. The “smoke” reproduced in Miniature The Horror felt by people like the boss of Dave Harvey (Greg Kinnear in full and resplendent dad mode), who initially understands him as a hero, then quickly passes to work satisfactory to trap him. Above all, early unveiling unlocks the entire depth of Egerton’s masterful performance. The real version of Dave is equally pitiful and threatening, attractive and unable to happen completely as a normal person. Egerton can easily project confidence and affability, but once Dave is fully exposed, the role of “the investigator of criminal fire which is also a fire” is just as rich as the shaded ID of Hauser in “Black Bird”. Mwine is also fantastic; You feel for solitary and unhappy Freddy even if watching it makes you want to crawl out of your skin.
“Smoke” has a sense of humor that helps to counter the Flépant factor. The increasingly obvious affirmation of Dave’s book gives Slollett a great reaction work in the middle of the painful determination of Michelle. John Leguizamo does not appear as the ex-unit of Dave until the half of the season, but it is worth waiting for a shameless slimeball which turned to the production of pornography without badge to give it a goal. Chlumsky is less ridiculous, but still welcomed, at the late arrival of Anna “Amy de” Veep “” as one of Michelle’s detective colleagues. With the participation of former HBO Higher-ups, Kary Antholis (also the original host of “Firebug”) and Richard Pepler, both executive producers, “Smoke” is a particularly open assertion of Apple’s intention to become a new primitive point of sale. Not only is the casting packaged with gills; The theme song is interpreted by none other than the singer of Radiohead Thom Yorke, like Mick Jagger Moonlighting as the voice of his colleague “Slow Horses”.
With half as many episodes as “Black Bird”, “Smoke” is perhaps not surprisingly less tight, and begins to unleash in absurdity in the section at home of the season. Freddy moves away a little too close to the stereotype of a mystical scientist; Michelle makes reckless and drastic decisions that led to belief. Nevertheless, the “smoke” as a whole – and especially as a vehicle for Egerton – is deeply satisfactory, a quick and clean burn which leaves little time.
The first two episodes of “Smoke” are now broadcast on Apple TV +, the remaining episodes broadcast every week on Friday.
