Latest news with #Smoke
The Guardian
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Smoke review – no TV show has ever been worth sticking with more
I never want to include spoilers, but sometimes they cannot be avoided. So, because I want you to stick with the new miniseries by Dennis Lehane, starring Taron Egerton (the pair reuniting after their great success with 2022's Black Bird), and enjoy the myriad benefits it will reap, I urge you to ignore any misgivings you have about the first two episodes of Smoke. Most of them will fall away. The tonal inconsistencies, the apparent self-indulgence of Lehane with his protagonist's hobby, the dabs of bad characterisation – just keep the faith. If you can't, then Google the true crime podcast on which Smoke is based and work out what must be happening from there. I'm not giving you the title because you'll be ruining a lot of fun for yourself. It is not as though sticking with it will be too much of a hardship, even if you do have loads of questions. At its inception, Smoke is at the very least a solid police procedural. Egerton plays Dave Gudsen, a former firefighter who became an arson investigator after a traumatic callout put an end to his original career. When two serial arsonists start setting fires all over his patch and his searches for them stall, a detective from the local police department, Michelle Calderon (Jurnee Smollett), is brought in to help. She is in effect being punished for ending an affair with her captain (Rafe Spall) and is eager to catch the bad guys and restore her standing. Further complications to her private life include a mother in jail for an act first suggested by Calderon's flashbacks to a terrifying experience in her childhood, then confirmed by her attendance at her mother's parole hearing, in the face of deep hostility from her siblings. We meet one of the main suspects long before she and Gudsen do. Freddy Fasano (a mesmerising performance by Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, which should see him clean up at awards time as thoroughly as Paul Walter Hauser did after Black Bird) is a cowed fry cook at a fast food outlet. Among other things, Lehane and Mwine make him a study in dreadful loneliness, whose ramifications spread like the fires set around the neighbourhood. One of the arsonists uses the 'divide and conquer' method – setting alight crisp aisles (So fatty! So flammable!) in supermarkets before starting bigger fires elsewhere so the emergency services are stretched thin. It suggests someone with a working knowledge of the department's resources, so Gudsen and Calderon begin the long task of matching firefighters' absence records with the days previous fires occurred and homing in on the possible perpetrator. Smoke becomes a cat and mouse game, with the opposing sides circling each other in ways that become increasingly extreme, but never quite tip over into preposterous. It is hugely entertaining, though it is a shame that the main story slightly swamps Freddy's and gives Mwine less to do as time goes on. But Egerton serves up an increasingly layered, clever performance as Gudsen, hitting every ball Lehane and the true story on which Smoke is based throw at him out of the park. It will certainly set him up for further and deserved success. Let's hope it does the same for Mwine. Hang in there, and enjoy. Smoke is on Apple TV+ now.
Indian Express
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Smoke review: Like a Mahesh Bhatt thriller with an Apple-level budget and an MX Player vibe
After knocking it out of the park with the excellent prison drama Black Bird a couple of years ago, writer Dennis Lehane and star Taron Egerton have reunited on the new Apple mini-series Smoke. The nine-episode thriller follows a mismatched pair of investigators tasked with tracking down a couple of arsonists. Gudsen, the character played by Egerton, is an expert of some kind. He lives and breathes fire. His new partner Calderon, played by Jurnee Smollett, is a detective with a horrific past. In a contrived piece of writing that even Mahesh Bhatt would have drawn the line at, it is revealed that Calderon's mother tried to set their house ablaze when she was a child. It's like Dexter, with an Apple-level budget but the soul of an MX Player original. Rohan Naahar is an assistant editor at Indian Express online. He covers pop-culture across formats and mediums. He is a 'Rotten Tomatoes-approved' critic and a member of the Film Critics Guild of India. He previously worked with the Hindustan Times, where he wrote hundreds of film and television reviews, produced videos, and interviewed the biggest names in Indian and international cinema. At the Express, he writes a column titled Post Credits Scene, and has hosted a podcast called Movie Police. You can find him on X at @RohanNaahar, and write to him at He is also on LinkedIn and Instagram. ... Read More
Japan Today
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
Arson ignites the Dennis Lehane-created Apple TV+ firebug series 'Smoke'
By MARK KENNEDY Author and screenwriter Dennis Lehane has a healthy respect for the power of fire. He learned that the hard way — surviving a house fire in Boston in his 30s. Lehane was living on the top floor of an apartment building when a propane tank on the roof exploded and started a blaze. The landlord was replacing the building's smoke detectors at the time so none were working. Lehane is lucky to be alive and he credits, in part, the flames. 'If you're trapped in fire — if you wake up and the building you're in is on fire — it's up to the fire at that point. It's really up to whims of the fire, whatever's going to happen to you. And I find that lack of control fascinating.' Lehane, whose literary canon includes the novels-turned-movie hits 'Gone, Baby, Gone' and 'Mystic River,' has turned to fire for his latest project — Apple TV+'s new nine-episode crime drama 'Smoke.' It debuts Friday. It's based on the true story of a former arson investigator who was convicted in 1998 of serial arson, captured in part after he wrote a novel about a firefighter who was a serial arsonist. The case — chronicled in the 2021 podcast Firebug — sparked something in Lehane. 'I just thought, that's just the height of craziness. Like, you're not only in denial about who you are, you're so far in denial you're going to write a book about what a great guy you are and then use the fires that you set as the models for the fires in your book?' he says. 'I can get in the zip code of that mindset; I cannot land on the street, though." The show marks a reunion between Lehane, Greg Kinnear and Taron Egerton, who previously worked together on the 2022 Apple TV+ series "Black Bird." It also stars Jurnee Smollett, Anna Chlumsky and John Leguizamo, and boasts an original, eerie song by Radiohead's Thom Yorke called 'Dialing In.' Egerton plays Dave Gudsen, an arson investigator in Umberland, a fictional town in the Pacific Northwest, who is chasing two separate firebugs. He's teamed up with a smart but troubled detective played by Smollett, who begin a game of cat and mouse. If the setup sounds like it leads to a typical TV procedural, viewers who stick around get rewarded by a show that gets weirder and more complex, infused by Lehane's attraction to moral ambiguity. 'We walk with contradictions and I think that's the dramatic irony that Dennis is exploring.' says Smollett. 'These people are saying they're fighting to do the right thing and yet they're morally questionable. I think that's very relevant today.' Edgerton's Dave, it's soon clear, is not who he appears to be and has an almost superhuman ability to compartmentalize aspects of his personal and private lives. He is both bombastic and insecure, goofy and frightening. 'Taron has endless reservoirs of talent to draw on. He's an extremely inspired actor,' says Lehane. 'He comes at it from the same place I come at it, which is Taron won't take a role unless some part of it scares him. I won't tell a story unless some of it scares me." Egerton said he relished a chance to show a different side of himself, rebelling a little at his safe, good-guy public persona after the success of his heroic turn in 2024's 'Carry-On.' 'You know what? I'm not that affable. I am sometimes, but I'm not some of the time,' he says, laughing. 'I think the thing I love about Dave is there is a tension between what the perception of him is and who he really is. And how can you ever really know who a person is?' Adding to the series' allure is some of Lehane's street poetry, like the line: 'Whatever you do, whatever you know, however much lifetime wisdom you've accrued, fire puts a lie to it all.' Smollett was onboard after an initial conversation with Lehane in which he said: 'So many of us say we want to be happy and yet we are drawn to the very thing that will destroy us.' That was Smollett's entry point to her gloriously messy character. Smollett's detective, a former Marine, refuses to be vulnerable, is excellent at her job, traumatized by a past experience with arson and not afraid to mess with anyone. Early on, she is shown using a sledgehammer to her own home. 'She plays with fire,' says Smollett. 'She's living on the edge and has this mask and this guard up and walks around as if she's invincible because she's really just afraid." Lehane says with 'Smoke' he's drawn to people who invest in a narrative of who they choose to be rather than be true to who they really are. 'You don't know who they are because they don't know who they are,' he says. 'They're running from themselves, they're running from their true selves. And I felt like that's the interesting story here I'm trying to tell.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Los Angeles Times
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
LACMA opens its new building for a sneak peak: Photos from the first preview
The concrete walls of the David Geffen Galleries were still bare Thursday evening. The landscaping outside is still settling in, and pockets of construction were still visible. But the minute the music poured out of the upstairs entryway, it finally hit: The new LACMA is actually here. After five years of construction, so much debate about its scale, design and ambitions, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art held its first event Thursday night inside the Peter Zumthor-designed building. A sprawling, immersive concert by composer and SoCal jazz hero Kamasi Washington called for multiple bands, each with about a dozen musicians, to play site-specific arrangements throughout the empty galleries before art has been installed. A woodwind ensemble overlooked Park La Brea through floor-to-ceiling glass; a choir stacked harmonies that floated over the span of the structure as it crossed Wilshire Boulevard. Hundreds of VIPs and members of the media took it all in. The project has its skeptics, including how the museum's permanent collection will function in it. But for now, museum members could slink about the echoing halls of L.A.'s newest landmark and ponder the possibilities. Guests at the sneak peek inside the new building Thursday cross a glass-lined expanse that crosses over Wilshire Boulevard. LACMA Director Michael Govan addresses members of the media assembled for the first public peek inside the empty building, which still needs to complete some construction details and install the art before opening, targeted for April 2026. The design of the museum has morphed over the years, from a dark, curvaceous amoeba-like form that echoed the nearby La Brea Tar Pits to a design that retains the curves up top but shifts to rectilinear glass on the galleries level below. The preview event Thursday featured musicians staged throughout the building. Preview events give museum members a chance to view Zumthor's design before art is installed. One of the lingering questions is how the concrete walls will fare given the museum's new plan to shift from permanent collection displays to ever-rotating exhibitions — and all the rehanging of artworks that will be required. The setting sun casts long shadows from visitors looking out toward the rooftop of Renzo Piano's Resnick Pavilion and, off in the distance on the left, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures' domed terrace. Artist Tony Smith's installation 'Smoke' has a new home outside the David Geffen Galleries. The museum recently announced the addition of a forthcoming Jeff Koons' sculpture, 'Split-Rocker.' 'Smoke' rises near a long entry staircase to the new building. When the new building opens in April 2026, LACMA has said, the ticketing process will be handled at kiosks on the ground level. Inside another one of the galleries. Some of the architecture-circle speculation about the building has centered on the finish of the building's concrete, inside and out. The view from the David Geffen Galleries as it crosses Wilshire Boulevard. Times art critic Christopher Knight, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his early analysis of the LACMA building plan, and Times music critic Mark Swed attended the preview concert event Thursday. Check back for their first impressions of the new space.
RTÉ News
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Need a new thriller series this weekend? Try Smoke
"Whatever you do, whatever you know, however much lifetime wisdom you've accrued, fire puts a lie to it all." Author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island, The Wire) has reteamed with his Black Bird star Taron Egerton for Smoke, a nine-part series on Apple TV+. The writer and actor are in the best of company: joining them is Jurnee Smollett, best known for Friday Night Lights, True Blood, and Lovecraft Country. Chances are you'll be spending a lot of time with the three of them in the weeks ahead. This is quite the power trio, and their show has everything you look for in a new flame. In Smoke, Egerton's fire department investigator Dave Gudsen and Smollett's police detective Michelle Calderon team up to catch two serial arsonists - and both of their careers are at stake. Gudsen has drawn a blank in his work for over a year while Calderon's secondment is effectively a CV-destroying move after an affair with her boss. Things get off to a shaky start, but amidst the paperwork, put-downs, and ashes, a partnership begins to take shape. Gudsen tells Calderon that serial arsonists "tend to be powerless in their own lives", and from the get-go Smoke introduces us to one of them, fast food worker Freddy Fasano, who is excellently played by Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine (Blood Diamond, Heroes, The Lincoln Lawyer). So, we get Fasano's backstory as Gudsen and Calderon try to put a face to his fires. You'll just have to watch to find out more about the other arsonist. With great chemistry between Egerton and Smollett, Smoke moves fast and deftly combines the professional and the personal to create one of the more intriguing procedurals of recent telly times. What's above covers the first two instalments, which Apple TV+ has made available now. New ones will follow every Friday until 15 August.
