In “City on Fire” on Apple TV+, an NYU student is shot in Central Park on the Fourth of July, 2003. Samantha is alone; there are no witnesses and very little physical evidence. Her friends’ band is playing at her favorite downtown club but she leaves to meet someone, promising to return. She never does. As the crime against Samantha is investigated, she’s revealed to be the crucial connection between a series of mysterious citywide fires, the downtown music scene, and a wealthy uptown real estate family fraying under the strain of the many secrets they keep.
Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage cemented their place in TV history with a pair of teen soaps that epitomized the aughts. “The O.C.” and the original “Gossip Girl” imprinted on an entire generation, giving millennials a taste for curated soundtracks, pre-recessionary opulence and side-swept bangs. For their latest project, the showrunning duo return to their comfort zone — or rather, contort their source material until it fits their M.O., whether or not it suits the story at hand.
“City on Fire,” an eight-episode limited series on Apple TV+, is adapted from Garth Risk Hallberg’s 2015 novel of the same name. The book, an urban epic that sprawls over 900 pages, traces the fallout from the shooting of an NYU freshman, culminating in New York’s infamous 1977 blackout a few months later. As the title implies, the plot is intimately bound up in a particular time and place.
For the show, Schwartz and Savage make the standard adjustments required to squeeze a novel of that size into a season of television. Scenes are condensed; chronology is clarified. But they make one baffling choice that throws the entire enterprise off-balance: switching the setting to 2003. It’s the year of another citywide blackout, so there’s at least some historical basis for the move — but more importantly, 2003 is squarely in the Schwartz and Savage sweet spot. Watching the result, one gets the distinct impression that the fast-forward had more to do with this track record than the best interests of the show. You don’t have to be a fan of the book to tell “City on Fire” has been yanked out of its natural habitat, then thrust into a context where it no longer makes sense.
MacDailyNews Take: We likely weren’t going to watch it, prior to this review, but now we’ll have to check it out!
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To see if it really is a train wreck?
It’s likely as much a financial decision as anything else. It’s a LOT more expensive to produce a period drama than contemporary — and the 25-year difference between the book’s time period and the TV version means a lot less period detail is needed.