Apple TV+'s 'Smoke' Is Hot Enough to Belong in Theaters

When was the last time you saw Taron Egerton in cinemas? The Welsh actor enjoyed a stratospheric breakout role in the smarmy, sexy spy thriller pastiche Kingsman: The Secret Service, and for the second half of the 2010s, his reaffirmed his confident and charismatic screen presence with projects of increasing size – an unlikely ski-jumping Olympian in Eddie the Eagle, returning as Eggsy for a Kingsman sequel, and a triumphant turn as Elton John in Rocketman. (We’re all going to forget that Robin Hood reboot ever happened.) 

But since flirting with Oscar buzz in Dexter Fletcher’s soaring musical biopic (which absolutely lay groundwork for Better Man, the Robbie Williams monkey film), Egerton has been saving his sharp dramatic chops for the small screen, with streaming projects like Black Bird, Tetris, Carry-On, and now the arson crime drama Smoke.

We’re not here to speculate on the decisions or pressures on any young actor’s career choices (or lack thereof), but someone as cool, charismatic, and capable as Egerton deserves to be showcasing the heavy, repressed emotions of Dave Gudsen, his dirty cop character in Smoke, in theaters. This is a guy who excels when he’s upselling modest thriller scripts or flaunting his winning combination of cheekiness and intensity in tales of larger-than-life escapism; ten years into his career, why can we only see him on our laptops and smart TVs?

Everything good about Egerton can be seen in Smoke, the nine-episode Apple TV+ series about a brash but insecure arson investigator on the hunt for two major suspects. But as supremely watchable as Dennis Lehane’s show is – with look at the intersections of male violence and cop mentality, a likeable, lively cast, and plenty of gripping twists – Egerton’s nasty, volatile lead performance drawn out over eight hours comes at the cost of seeing him live it up on the big screen.

Two different arsonists are wreaking havoc in convenience stores across Dave Gudsen’s precinct – one who sets alight milk jugs of flammable liquid, and one who smuggles detonators into packets of chips. A forensic expert is brought in to aid his investigation – Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollet), who’s navigating a personal and professional minefield including a nasty breakup with a vindictive police captain, her incarcerated mother eligible for parole for fire-related crime Michelle never forgave, and a nebbish, boring new cop situationship (Rafe Spall) she’s only entertaining because she can walk all over him.

How’s Dave doing? Also not good. He feels like he’s walking on eggshells with his wife (Hannah Emily Anderson), his step-son (Luke Roessler) hates him, and the aforementioned two serial arsonists are no closer to being found. He bristles at being paired with a partner from a different division (perhaps her being a woman of color contributes to his irritation), but he quickly finds a novel outlet for the frustration of his work and home life: writing his own arson detective book. 

In Smoke’s initial stretches, this seems like a wholesome and productive idea: Gudsen has plenty of experience to channel into the type of procedural potboiler that’s devoid of style but reliably entertaining, and it would put him in the rich tradition of law enforcement who turn from stuffy offices to author success stories.

But our hopes for a story of literary self-discovery are dashed pretty quickly after a shocking reveal about Dave’s hidden, destructive impulses at the end of episode two (credit to Smoke for not drawing out its central reveal until after the midway point) that brings the shows themes into sharp focus: both arson and criminal investigation are positioned as methods of claiming back power over a chaotic world, but violent crime offers a far more salacious, immediate, and personal valve for a real – or just perceived – sense of helplessness. Why set fires? The world is hurting you; you hurt the world back.

Much of Smoke concerns the short fuses of petty misogynists – Dave’s home life is one of perceived emasculation, feeling like his assumed and masculinized sense of control has been eroded, when in fact he is just a pretty lousy husband and step-father – but the actual venom of the “masculinity under attack” cop mentality that Dave nurses throughout is mirrored (or, undermined) by the perspective of one of the real arsonists, Freddy Fasano (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine). 

Freddy is a poor, Black fry cook who spent his childhood in foster care. While Mwine’s performance leans heavily on Freddy’s nervous, reticent physicality and affectations, Smoke paints him as a man worthy of empathy and the product of intersecting broken systems that fail the vulnerable and inadvertently make violence an appealing option.

Around halfway through the series, the steady procedural thrust to the drama accelerates into a realm of escalating crimes, Dave’s delusional autofiction, Talented Mr Ripley-esque duplicity, and heightened performances (perhaps Egerton felt obliged to start going full ham when he realized somewhere else in the show, John Leguizamo was chewing scenery as a washed-up ex-cop-turned-seedy-pornographer). 

Smoke is based on Truth Media’s investigative podcast Firebug, about a real arson investigator who penned a manuscript that unlocked their history of setting lethal fires, but by the last few episodes, it feels like only the broadest strokes of the true crime story were translated into the mechanics of Lehane’s drama. (The details certainly seem more fabricated than Lehane and Egerton’s superior true crime Apple TV+ series, Black Bird.)

Smoke remains entertaining for its nine episodes, but loses a certain rigor to its drama in the back half. Perhaps this would have been less egregiously felt with a shorter series or, dare we say it, turning Firebug into a feature film. There’s nothing overly complex or deep about its characterizations that would stop it from translating to a punchy, economical two hours where we could luxuriate on every blooming flame and facial grimace – Smoke just feels too cinematic to best enjoy across this many weekly episodes. Maybe next time, if Egerton is offered a latent psychopath, we’ll get to enjoy it on the big screen.

Smoke continues with new episodes every Friday on Apple TV+ through the end of August 2025.