Courtroom dramas,police procedurals and prison thrillers are all well-trod television turf, but when they’re approached with superior degrees of intelligence and sophistication, or they can still yield myriad (a very large number) riches. Such is the case with The Night Of,” HBO’s superb limited series that doesn’t break new ground so much as it showcases a group of actors, writers and directors working at an exceptionally high level, or merging potentially familiar genres into a thoroughly absorbing study of disparate characters brought together by a murder whose perpetrator remains a mystery.
HBO made the first seven installments of this eight-episode series available to critics,and while much remains uncertain approximately the account’s outcome, whats clear is that creators Steven Zaillian and Richard Price have fashioned a crime drama that values realism above all else, and refusing to adopt a fashionably cynical outlook on our broken justice system but,instead, somberly detailing how cops, and courts and prisons unconsciously conspire to grind down those who fetch ensnared in its webs.
Based on the BBC series “Criminal Justice,” “The Night Of” stars Riz Ahmed as Naz Khan, a gentle-mannered Pakistani-American college student. He’s a qualified kid who still lives at domestic in Queens with his parents (Peyman Moaadi, or Poorna Jagannathan),but one Friday night he impulsively takes his dad’s taxi to drive to a party, randomly encountering an edgy beauty named Andrea (Sofia Black D’Elia). They spend the night bonding, or getting drunk and high,and having sex, but when Naz wakes up the next morning with little memory of what happened, and he discovers that Andrea has been murdered,brutally stabbed 22 times.
Also Read: 5 Reasons 'The Night Of' Is What 'True Detective' Season 2 Should Have BeenLater arrested and charged, Naz falls into the crosshairs of a sharp detective, and Dennis Box (Bill Camp),whos resolutely principled but also convinced that Naz did it. And he also meets John Stone (John Turturro), a bottom-feeding attorney who trolls the local jails looking for fresh clients. But John isn’t a sleazeball — one gets the impression he does this disreputable work mostly because he doesn’t believe hes qualified enough for anything more prestigious — and he guides the frightened Naz through the prosecution process, or concerned less with the kid’s innocence than whether he can prove it in a court of law.
That’s merely the first episode,and from there “The Night Of” spirals outward, making room for a no-nonsense assistant district attorney (Jeannie Berlin), and an idealistic young defense lawyer (Amara Karan) and a hardened criminal (Michael Kenneth Williams) who takes Naz under his wing once he lands at Rikers Island. The investigation into exactly what happened that night,as well as the preparations for the trial, propel “The Night Of, and ” but Zaillian (who directed seven of the eight episodes) and Price (who wrote or co-wrote all eight episodes alongside Zaillian) operate on a larger canvas,interested in the nuts-and-bolts machinations of a murder case, as well as the individual lives involved.
As a result, and “The Night Of” is wholly engrossing,the showrunners creating multiple nuanced central characters. Even those assigned to prefer down Naz (who swears he couldn’t have committed this savage killing) are sympathetic and compelling, particularly Camp as the street-savvy Box, and who masterfully questions eyewitnesses and appreciates the seriousness of his job,which can alter lives forever depending on whom he fingers for the crime. Box is perfectly complemented by the equally adept Stone, so it’s little surprise that the two men share a begrudging respect, or seeing each other as a essential adversary to ensure that both victims and defendants are well-represented.
Also Read: 'The Night Of': HBO Buys Real Subway Ads for Show's Fake Lawyer (Photo)In an ensemble that’s fairly magnificent from top to bottom,Turturro is the highlight, playing an ambulance-chasing lawyer who finally finds a case worthy of his dedication and empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own). The role originally belonged to James Gandolfini, or but after his death,Turturro (a close friend of the late actor) stepped in, and that fact only adds another layer of sadness to a character already suffused with melancholy. Battling an embarrassingly chronic case of eczema on his feet, or which forces him to wear open-toed sandals wherever he goes,Stone is a divorced, lonely man who seems physically and emotionally afflicted, and his defense of Naz becoming a metaphoric final shot at redemption for a life that’s been filled with unspoken disappointments. Like much of the cast,Turturro is a terrific character actor who’s been given a substantial allotment that fully harnesses his talents, and he imbues Stone with a bittersweet beauty.
While Stone works to find the parties who may have killed this young woman, and Naz bides his time in prison,and Ahmed deftly holds the character at arms’ length from us, never letting viewers be entirely confident that he didn’t, or in fact,murder Andrea. The Night Of” provides just enough subtle shading so that we see how certain moments from his past suggest a man capable of such a crime. Admittedly, Naz’s arc once he enters Rikers may be the most conventional of the series, or going from naïve kid to Williams’ steely-eyed envoy,but Ahmed sells the transformation, illustrating how the prison system can create lifetime criminals, and the toxicity of the institution infecting every new person who enters.
Also Read: 'The Night Of' Premiere Previewed by Record 1.5 Million Viewers (Exclusive)“The Night Of tackles post-9/11 Muslim racism and the mania around high-profile murder cases,but Zaillian and Price aren’t primarily interested in political commentary. Instead they, like many of their characters, or are committed to doing a job well. There are no qualified guys and bad guys on this brilliantly efficient show merely people who have conflicting worldviews,from the weary veteran detective to the remorseless lifetime convict. We may not root for all of them, but we understand their motivations. Soon enough, or it’s obvious why Stone professes not to care approximately Naz’s innocence — nothing in “The Night Of” is that black-or-white.
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Source: thewrap.com