The Night Of

The Night Of is an intelligently well balanced crime, prison & courtroom drama. The pilot and finale serve as perfect bookends for the consistent and compelling episodes inbetween that simmer and unfold brilliantly. The writing, direction and cinematography is on point throughout and the diverse cast is incredible. Riz Ahmed gives a well realised and developed performance and Bill Camp & Amara Karan impress also. But praise must go to John Turturro who's performance is of a different calibre.

Another good summer HBO mini-series. Never better than its first episode, which is chock full of wonderful flourishes, great little details that showed that cops and attorneys are just humans getting through their day, instead of the 24/7 superheroes they're usually depicted as.

This has one of the best pilots I have seen in a long time, but unfortunately the rest of the show fails to live up to it. A shorter running time, with more focused writing and a more consistent tone could have done much more with the talent that this series so clearly showcases in its first episode.

It's all very well done, with good performances by all. Beautiful photography. It gets tiring, with the main character doing everything he can to ruin his case though.

I typically don’t like crime dramas as they're often excessively melodramatic and dumbed-down, but this one’s different. This one avoids sensationalism and cliches and offers up a riveting (and horrific!) story with an honest look into the U.S. legal system. Zaillian perfectly crafts this series with help from an all around outstanding cast.

The thing that bothers me about this whole thing is how easily and quickly the characters become corrupted.

While still a familiar story line, its so well presented and acted that it feels fresh.

Rather solid crime series. Although it has a hard time juggling the two stories (which shouldn't be happening at the same time), they are both compelling -- the wonky injustice in the outside world and the assimilation into harsh prison life on the inside. The green color grading and derivative music may lead you to think this is like any other high-production series, but the level of acting and the carefully unsurprising storytelling sets it aside from its more sensationalised inferiors.

Great cast, especially nice to see Peyman Moaadi from A Seperation. If the writing had a little extra something I would think this is great but as it is I find many facets of The Night Of to be only average to slightly above average. Certainly feels like a longer story than a feature film but not a big enough story to necessitate 8 parts, feels padded and stretched in more than a few places, I'll take 3 tight episodes over 8 loose ones. Feels inferior to many British crime series.

There's a few missteps with Karan's character and the depiction of prison life deserved a bit more fleshing out. But this is primarily about the investigation. Turturro's character, Det. Box, Jeannie Berlin - absolutely perfect. The ambiguous denoument. This really felt like Season 1 of a new The Wire. By itself, it's wonderful. If expanded, it could be magnificent. For 8 weeks, I couldn't wait to see what happened next and I was rarely frustrated by the answers. That's the best review possible.