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City On Fire begins on July 4th 2003, when a young woman, Samantha (Chase Sui Wonders), has been shot in Central Park.
But that’s not the end of the story, because we go back in time to a few weeks earlier, where a young lad, Charlie (Wyatt Oleff – I Am Not Okay With This), is talking to a shrink about meeting her in the record shop. He fancies her, but feels she doesn’t know he’s alive. Thankfully, given her camera and an eye for a subject, she does spot him, and they certainly hit it off with him declaring, “It’s physically impossible to be sad when she’s around”.
On the night in question, she drops Charlie off at a bar where her favourite band is playing, telling him she’ll be back in an hour.
Elsewhere, there’s marital strife between Regan (Jemima Kirke – Conversations With Friends) and Keith (Ashley Zukerman – Fear Street Part I) when the former receives an anonymous letter, stating, “He is lying to you”. This seems like a number of aspects within the first two episodes I’ve seen so far – and when the plot spun off far away from anything to do with Samantha, it got rather disjointed and tedious, and I just didn’t care.
However things turn out, as it’s 2003, it’s amusing to see the primitive mobile phones that we used back then 😀
As we get to the end of ep.1, we come to the moments for which we were shown the disastrous outcome at the start, but who did the deed? Well, I don’t know, and even if I did, I wouldn’t say.
Watching a bit deeper into the first two episodes, and with revealations starting to be revealed, there’s other storylines that are also dropped in from time to time, all of which sound like they’ve come from a bad soap opera, and none of which sound the least bit interesting, so I can’t see myself sticking with this.
City On Fire starts on Friday May 12th on Apple TV+. Two episodes are available at launch, with new episodes added weekly. The series isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but you can buy the book.
Thanks to our friends at Apple TV+ for the review screener.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 45-60 mins per episode (10 episodes)
Release date: May 12th 2023
Studio: Apple TV+
Format: 2.00:1
Series Directors: Jesse Peretz, Liz Garbus, Haifaa Al-Mansour
Screenplay: Stephanie Savage, Josh Schwartz
Novel: Garth Risk Hallberg
Music: Jason Hill
Cast:
Samantha: Chase Sui Wonders
Charlie: Wyatt Oleff
Regan: Jemima Kirke
William: Nico Tortorella
Amory: John Cameron Mitchell
Keith: Ashley Zukerman
Mercer: Xavier Clyde
Detective Ali Parsa: Omid Abtahi
Detective PJ McFadden: Kathleen Munroe
Sewer: Alexandra Doke
Nicky: Max Milner
Sol: Alexander Pineiro
Will: Chaise Torio
Background: Taelynn Wolf
Delirium ‘DT’ Tremens: Dylan T Jackson
Ramona: Shawnee Smith
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.