Summer has come to the 2025 TV schedule, which often means the arrivals of some of the most highly-anticipated streaming TV shows. As a fan of Chicago Fire on network TV who has been known to dabble in Station 19 and 9-1-1, I had a feeling that Apple TV+'s flame-filled Smoke with Taron Egerton was going to be right up my alley. After the streamer released a trailer with some thrilling footage and reminders of the fantastic Black Bird, however, I see that I had no idea what I was in for, and Smoke has become one of my must-see shows of the summer.
What can I say? If the team from Black Bird came back together for Smoke, I can't see the new project going up in flames.
What To Expect From Smoke
The new crime drama was created and written by Dennis Lehane, starring Taron Egerton as arson investigator Dave Gudsen as well as Jurnee Smollett as police detective Michelle Calderone. Based on the trailer (seen above), they'll have a complicated relationship, to say the least! The cast will also feature the likes of Rafe Spall, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Hannah Emily Anderson, Anna Chlumsky, Adina Porter, Greg Kinnear, and John Leguizamo.
The story follows Gudsen and Calderone as they reluctantly team up to try and stop two arsonists who seem to be wreaking fiery havoc on the area. Although Smoke is a fictional story, the new drama was inspired by truth.media's "Firebug" podcast. The first two episodes will release on Friday, June 27, followed by one episode per week through to August 15.
After watching the trailer and thinking back on Taron Egerton and Dennis Lehane's previous collaboration, I can't help but wonder how true-to-life the story will be. Black Bird was based on an autobiographical novel and went the extra mile to avoid "exploiting" the true story. And that brings us to...
Why Black Bird Is An All-Time Favorite Streaming Crime Thriller
Almost exactly three years before Smoke will premiere for any viewer with an Apple TV+ subscription, Black Bird kicked off the story of Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton), who makes a plea deal to get out of his own prison sentence if he can get a full confession from serial killer and rapist Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser, who won the Critics Choice Award, Emmy, and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for the role) behind bars. The series also starred Sepidah Moafi as Jimmy's FBI handler, Greg Kinnear as police detective Brian Miller, and Ray Liotta as Jimmy's father in one of the Goodfellas star's last performances before his death.
This wasn't an action-packed crime thriller comprised of six episodes of riots and explosions and gunfights galore, but rather a chilling miniseries that really lingers. Even three years later, I vividly remember the shots of Egerton's Jimmy in isolation, frantically trying to recreate Hall's map in his own blood before he forgot the finer details. There was no true happy ending, with none of the burial sites from the map being unearthed, and the show was an intense experience.
So, as a fan of crime dramas, I'd be optimistic about any project reuniting the creative team behind Black Bird, which includes Dennis Lehane once more as writer/creator and Taron Egerton once more as star/executive producer. Smoke's trailer just adds – pardon the pun – fuel to the fire. I'm officially psyched for the new show.
You can check out the series premiere of Smoke on Friday, June 27 on Apple TV+. If you missed out on Black Bird when it first released in 2022, you can find that on the streamer now.
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