Two serial arsonists have been starting fires throughout a Pacific Northwest town in "Smoke," a new drama from the prolific author and screenwriter Dennis Lehane ("Gone Baby Gone," "The Wire" and plenty more). 

On their trail we find the arson investigator Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) and Det. Michell Calderon (Jurnee Smollett). 

The nine-episode series co-stars John Leguizamo and Greg Kinnear. It's based on the podcast "Firebug," about the real-life arsonist John Leonard Orr.

Everything is dark and murky in "Smoke": The faded colors, the deep shadows, the morose characters, the elliptical flashbacks, the mumbled dialogue.

It's a repellent universe, the sort of place that will have you scrambling for that remote. Why would anyone want to endure this?

Lehane and company throw a shocking twist at the audience at the end of the second episode. We won't divulge the secret here, but it does shake up the story and suggest that a further investment in "Smoke" might have some rewards.

But if you're reliant on that sort of sudden turn in order to generate some excitement, you've already lost.

A viewing of the first two episodes proves to be quite the chore. We're introduced to one-dimensional characters, presented a mystery that the characters themselves barely seem to be interested in pursuing, and we're asked to just sit there and put up with it. It can be rather excruciating.

Very little of interest happens in those first two episodes, beyond a fire here and there, some poetically framed shots of embers falling to the ground, and one suspenseful sequence in a bunker that has essentially nothing to do with the rest of the story, involving a suspect who shouldn't even be a suspect.

Egerton, a terrific actor who has given a series of dynamic performances in recent years ("Rocketman" and more), seems totally disengaged. Smollett ("True Blood") gets a little bit more to do, at times, but her character is so confusingly scripted that it's hard for the actor to get a handle on her. There's some hope in the character of Freddy Fasano (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), one of the arson suspects, as he's at least written with some complexity.

Lehane has an impressive track record when it comes to working in this neo-noir space. He knows how to create the sort of richly textured atmosphere required to tell this story correctly. That makes it a considerable surprise to encounter a world that's so dour here, beset with overwhelming gloom.

It's not like every minute of every TV show has to be spectacularly entertaining. We're not saying that here. A slow-burn style of storytelling can have its share of rewards. It's just asking a lot of an audience to sift through so much filler before getting to the potential good stuff.

 The first two episodes are very hard to sit through.