Jim McKay builds drama from ordinary behaviour and gets convincing performances from non-professional actors. We rate his patient, actor-led approach, with a caveat: in television, assured direction can only do so much for an overextended story.
Fi1m perspective
The fires in Smoke (2025) are hard to stop watching. We felt uneasy about their beauty, because cinematographers François Dagenais and Sam McCurdy make the burning attractive in a story about arson. McKay shares directing duties with Joe Chappelle and Kari Skogland, and the series keeps its visual confidence even as the investigation starts to repeat itself. That is a fair place to begin with him: we rate his care with images and performances, but this is also a reminder that good direction cannot make nine episodes necessary.
His independent features began with Girls Town (1996), followed by Our Song (2000), Everyday People (2004) and Angel Rodriguez (2005), all of which he wrote and directed. His recurring subjects are working-class and immigrant communities in cities, with drama built through small moments. He frequently casts non-professional actors, putting the emphasis on believable behaviour rather than conspicuous stylistic flourishes. En el séptimo día (2018) brought him back to features and to working with non-professionals.
Television became a regular part of his work from 2006, including The Wire, Breaking Bad and The Good Wife. David Simon chose him for The Wire because he could build drama from ordinary moments. That makes sense: episodic work needs someone who can serve the writer without treating every scene as an opportunity to advertise himself. The limitation is that McKay's own interests become harder to distinguish from those of the programme he is serving.
In Smoke, created by Dennis Lehane, Taron Egerton and Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine give us reasons to stay. The investigation still cannot sustain nine episodes, however forcefully the fires are photographed. Jeremy Stanbridge's production design is carefully finished without telling us enough about the people who occupy these surroundings. McKay directed three episodes, so neither the series' strengths nor its frustrating repetitions belong to him alone. Try the independent features before using his television credits as a viewing list.
Biography
Jim McKay is an American film and television director, producer and writer. He began directing feature films in the 1990s, including Girls Town (1996), Our Song (2000) and Everyday People (2004), several of which he also wrote or produced.
McKay has directed numerous television series, including episodes of The Wire (2002), Breaking Bad (2008), Better Call Saul (2015), Mr. Robot (2015), The Americans (2013), Evil (2019), Black Bird (2022) and Tulsa King (2022). He directed three episodes of the 2025 Apple TV+ series Smoke.
He received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 2003 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004, and was awarded the Lincoln Center Martin E. Segal Award in 2005.
