The opening of Smoke is tense and terrifying. Firefighter Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) is trapped inside a burning building, running out of oxygen and consumed by panic. Mesmeric shots of roiling flames engulf the screen. In its first five minutes, the series reaches a crescendo that it fails to match throughout the rest of its run.

When we return to Gudsen a couple of years later, he’s an arson investigator on the trail of two serial firestarters. He’s had little success in his search and is far more invested in kickstarting a career as a crime novelist. Enter Jurnee Smollett’s Detective Michelle Calderone, relegated to Gudsen’s department after an affair with her superior officer (Rafe Spall) soured. Neither Gudsen nor Calderone are happy about their situation: both have big ambitions and even bigger egos. Surely the pair are primed for cracking crime-caper chemistry? Unfortunately not. Writer Dennis Lehane relies too heavily upon overplayed tropes, with stilted dialogue seemingly drawn from Gudsen’s own half-baked noir. Smollett is dealt the worst hand: her cold ex-marine (dogged, naturally, by childhood trauma) is more stereotype than believable character.

The hunt for the arsonists is strangely paceless, a symptom of a story stretched too thin. It jostles for attention alongside messy subplots involving Calderone’s past and Gudsen’s home life. Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine’s Freddie, a reserved fast-food employee hiding a burning resentment, is the most compelling element but constitutes only a small part of an uneven whole. Smoke is not just muddled, it commits the cardinal sin of television: it’s boring.

New episodes of Smoke are available on Apple TV + on Fridays