# City on Fire (2023)

> A college student's shooting in Central Park on July 4, 2003 sets off a mystery tangled with citywide fires, a downtown music scene, and a wealthy uptown family's buried secrets.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/117984

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 8
- Episode runtime: 51 min
- Status: Canceled
- Genres: drama, mystery
- Created by: Stephanie Savage, Josh Schwartz
- Network: Apple TV
- Cast: Jemima Kirke, Wyatt Oleff, Chase Sui Wonders, Nico Tortorella, Ashley Zukerman, Xavier Clyde, Max Milner, Alexandra Doke
- TMDB rating: 6.4/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14961770/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: moderate
- Complexity: labyrinthine
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: gritty, tense, moody, atmospheric, restless

## What critics say

Audience reception is mixed, with viewers finding the sprawling mystery intriguing in its ambitions but uneven in execution and payoff.

## Synopsis

City on Fire (2023) is a American mystery drama series created by Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz for Apple TV. Across eight episodes of roughly fifty-one minutes each, the story opens when a college student is shot in Central Park on July 4, 2003. Detectives Ali Parsa (Omid Abtahi) and PJ McFadden (Kathleen Munroe) pursue the case while a best friend becomes the prime suspect. Their investigation drifts toward a series of mysterious fires spreading across the city and into the downtown music world, where Charlie (Wyatt Oleff) and Samantha Cicciaro (Chase Sui Wonders) move among artists and hangers-on. Meanwhile, the wealthy uptown real estate family of Keith (Ashley Zukerman) and Regan (Jemima Kirke) frays under the strain of secrets they keep from one another. Each episode layers shifting perspectives and jumps across timelines, so every revelation reframes what came before. The mood is gritty and restless, with a hazy, smoky early-2000s New York atmosphere that feels both glamorous and dangerous. Viewers who enjoy Big Little Lies, Gossip Girl, and The Night Of will find kinship in its tangled class tensions and slow-building dread. The single season was canceled, leaving the central mystery open.

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