Smoke review – no TV show has ever been worth sticking with more

Taron Egerton and Jurnee Smollett hit every ball out of the park in this smart, mesmerising crime drama about arson investigators. It’s hugely entertaining – if you can make it through the shaky start

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.