- Network: Apple TV
- Series Premiere Date: Jun 27, 2025
Critic Reviews
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“Smoke” might have made a great novel, or movie. In its present form, it’s too big and messy to catch anything but the occasional spark.
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Ultimately, the performances in Smoke will help carry the story as fills in during subsequent episodes. But we do wonder how much patience people will have for the atmospheric nature of the show as the story ramps up.
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As a fan of Lehane, Egerton, Smollett, Leguizamo—pretty much all of this—I really wanted “Smoke” to work. And it does for so long that the decisions of the final two hours are all the more disappointing.
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There are a few big twists in Smoke, which is based on the true-crime podcast Firebug, and two of them are dropped quite early in the miniseries’ run. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but, unfortunately, the cat-and-mouse chases after those reveals lose steam in the show’s back half and can feel like they’re prolonging inevitable, albeit stylishly presented, ends.
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A show with about as much restraint as its fiends, sabotaging its frequently gripping action via a handful of crucial over-the-top contrivances.
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Despite feinting towards subversion, Lehane has produced a typical—overlong, caricature-laden, easy to watch but also to forget—streaming crime show.