City on Fire

The loose threads come together eventually in the eight-episode Apple TV+ series, based on Garth Risk Hallberg’s 900-page novel, if not in a particularly convincing fashion. But it’s entertaining as all get out, even if it’s all over the place. The characters are different enough and likable enough and unlikable enough and just plain weird enough to keep viewers engaged.

It all becomes a mite stodged up – a veritable bottleneck of competing narratives. It doesn’t help that Nicky Chaos (Max Milner), one of the rebel rockers Sam is obsessed with in flashback, is a cringeworthy Iggy clone (why are fictional musicians so difficult to write?).

It would be hard for me to say that City on Fire should be top of your watchlist. However, I would also be loathe to warn people off it. ... If you stick past the first episode and get to know the characters and their individual plights, no matter how down-the-line they are played, then there are still plenty of moments to enjoy here.

Sputters when we should feel the blaze of narrative urgency. [23 May - 11 Jun 2023, p.6]

City on Fire has done away with almost everything that was distinctive about the book. ... The ensemble is good, the New York City settings authentic and the soundtrack on the level you’d expect from Schwartz and Savage. But those aspects fizzle entirely in an exposition-dominated homestretch culminating in a series of contrivances that are too ludicrous to be resonant.

A convoluted mess, despite great potential.

The show favors stereotype over specificity. “City on Fire” is a much more earnest, less jaded show than “Gossip Girl” or “The O.C.”; its protagonists are still teenagers, but ones who wax rhapsodic about the city they idealize. When their show fails to demonstrate any real understanding of that city, though, the characters are projecting onto an empty slate.

The series knows what it should say and advocate for, but has absolutely no idea how to do it. The worst part is, even at its most basic level, the show is incapable of conveying the gravity of one of its most tragic elements.

The acting is abysmal and cliched, but I don’t want to pick on anyone individually because the writing is so bad that I’m not sure they had a chance.