A new day, a new miniseries featuring a Doctor. We’ve come back around to Jodie Whittaker with The Smoke, a drama about a dedicated firefighter coming back to work after a traumatic injury. There's a talented cast and some clear potential here, but I have yet to make up my mind about the project as a whole.
It’s Kev’s first day back at the station after enduring severe injuries responding to an arson at a council estate. He’s eager to be back on the job and prove he’s the “same old Kev,” eschewing the top brass’s insistence on him seeing a counselor, but he’s keeping both the extent of his injuries and his lingering trauma from his fellow firefighters. Furthermore, while it feels like everyone else has moved on from the arson, Kev is still determined to find those responsible and make them pay for what happened to him.
First off, I’d say that, given what we learn about the fire and the injuries Kev suffered, this is yet another work to add to a long list of shows, movies, and plays that feature able-bodied actors playing characters with disabilities. I don’t know what it’s going to take to finally turn the tide on this casting trend, but we still have a depressingly-long way to go there.
I’m interested in this miniseries so far but not fully won over yet. The premise of the story is a good one, and there are clearly a lot of compelling angles that can be explored: Kev’s reluctance to confront his trauma, his urgency to throw himself into work and hide what he’s going through from everyone else, his continued outrage at the procedural botch job that contributed to his injuries that night, and his disgust at the higher-ups who act like they care about what he went through. Additionally, the cast of characters at the fire station gel together nicely, with a strong back-and-forth that’s equal parts good-natured ribbing and genuine emotional connection.
However, this first episode feels a little overbaked, leaning too heavily into the extreme drama. I’m also more interested in Kev’s personal journey here than his quest to find the arsonists and bring them to justice, which looks like it will be a major component of the story. My overall feelings on this miniseries will depend a lot on what becomes the primary focus of the story and, more importantly, how it’s executed.
All that said, there are all kinds of good people in the cast, which is exciting. Kev is played by Jamie Bamber, aka Lee Adama from Battlestar Galactica, and the crew of the fire station features a pre-Kingsman Taron Egerton, Gerard Kearns (Ian from the original Shameless,) and David Walmsley (who played Rick on In the Flesh.) I also recognize Elizabeth Berrington, who plays the trauma counselor assigned to Kev – memorably, she was Auntie in the new Who episode “The Doctor’s Wife.”
Not much to see from Jodie Whittaker so far. She plays Trish Tooley, Kev’s girlfriend. We know that she’s been standing supportively at Kev’s side throughout this ordeal, she continues to worry about him, and she gets that he’s likely pretending to be more okay than he is. Trish is a very minor presence in the first episode, given that things are so centered around the fire station, and it remains to be seen whether she’ll figure more prominently into the story going forward. In other words, there’s a distinct possibility that this is another “supportive/long-suffering significant other of the complicated male protagonist” role for Whittaker.
But even though Trish is little more than a plot device at this point, Whittaker’s performance is still leaving an impression on me. I want to highlight a wordless scene toward the end of the episode – without any dialogue, Whittaker conveys a lot of feeling, demonstrating a quiet kind of “for better or worse” devotion, but not in a beatific angel-of-the-house way. You see a little steel beneath the compassion, a sense of “this is the hand we were dealt, but I’m choosing to stay in this with you.” It’s an impressive amount of depth brought to a character who probably has less than five minutes of screentime in this episode, and it leaves me wanting to see more of what Whittaker does here.
First impressions:
Accent Watch
Northern.
Recommend?
In General – A cautious maybe. Again, it’s all about execution. This miniseries could wind up being pretty interesting, or it might go off the rails.
Jodie Whittaker – Another maybe. There’s a spark of something good here – let’s see if Whittaker has the opportunity to develop it.
Warnings
Violence, strong thematic elements (including PTSD,) language, drinking, and brief nudity.
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