Apple TV+’s ‘City on Fire’ Misfires by Changing the Book’s Time Period: TV Review
Alison Herman TV Critic 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. This is the era of “The Bronx Is Burning” and “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD,” where an arsonist group of Hallberg’s invention could seamlessly blend into a background of civic decline and hostile neglect.