I had tried watching the first of Dennis Lehane’s Apple TV projects, ‘Black Bird’ but didn’t make it past the first episode. While the premise was good - convict goes undercover in order to get incriminating evidence on another inmate - something about it didn’t quite make me want to watch it. Part of this might be that I find Taron Egerton quite an offputting actor for some reason (more on this in a bit), but it meant that I wasn’t that excited about Smoke.
The thing that made me think that I might give it a go was the fact that it was about arson investigation, a field that I find interesting. The trailer was OK (and I noted that the theme song was by Thom Yorke) but it was definitely just a maybe. I don’t always agree with Lucy Mangan’s TV reviews in The Guardian, but her assessment of Smoke (“No TV show has ever been worth sticking with more” - a little hyperbolic, but we’ll put that on the subs) made me decide it was worth watching the first two episodes at least. I’m glad I did. What seemed like a formulaic premise from the off turns out to be something of a bait and switch and Taron Egerton’s performance is the lynchpin for the entire series. I had one of those a-ha moments when I realised “oh, you’re not supposed to like him” which, in retrospect, seems sort of obvious as he’s a real prick.
Dennis Lehane knows how to amp up tension and the entire series turns the screw little by little until the very end (my wife found it too tense and refused to watch the final episode). I think it also benefits from being on a streaming service, in that the series is nine episodes long and feels perfectly paced, without any padding. It also allows for the narrative turn to happen at the end of the second episode, whereas a broadcaster would probably require it to be the kicker of the first. I honestly don’t know if that would be better, as an extra episode really beds in the misconception that this is a pretty standard cop procedural. That may be to its detriment, however, as I would imagine that a lot of people would dismiss it after the premiere.
Now that I’ve watched all of Smoke, I’m inclined to give Black Bird another go and it’s also made me more enthusiastic about the forthcoming adaptation of Jordan Harper’s She Rides Shotgun, which is the one book of his that I haven’t read. (The Hollywood agent noir Everybody Knows was one of the darkest novels I’ve read in a long time and I have mixed feelings about there being a sequel. On the one hand, I can see that there’s more material to be mined in this area, but on the other I’m tired of everything having to be part of a series.)
Anyway, I’d recommend Smoke. It’s available on Apple TV+.