It’s a lot better, and HBO has to be really happy about that.

When the second season of the HBO series, True Detective, crashed and burned, the network needed a replacement Crime-Drama for its Sunday Summer night slot. HBO decided to greenlight a project that they had passed on a few years back. The show The Night Of, based on the BBC hit thriller Criminal Justice, was written and created by Steve Zaillian (Exodus, American Gangster, Schindler’s List) and Richard Price (Clockers, Ransom, Freedomland), and directed by James Marsh (The Theory Of Everything, Project Nim, Man on Wire).

The eight episode miniseries aired on July 10th, 2016, and its season finale aired on Sunday, August 28th, 2016. The show follows Nasir Khan “Naz” (Riz Ahmed), a Pakistani-American college student, who is stunned when he is invited to a party in Manhattan by the basketball team (it’s under the assumption that he is a tutor). When his friend, and ride, bails, Naz decides to “borrow” his father’s cab. As he’s driving into Manhattan, a young woman enters the cab mistaking him for a taxi driver. Despite the fact that he’s not supposed to be taking people in the cab, Naz proceeds to take the girl to the Hudson River, where they partake in the consumption of drugs and alcohol. The sum of his bad decisions sees him waking up in the middle of the night and finding the girl murdered.

As the show unravels we learn that things aren’t what they appear, and the preconceptions that we were exposed to during the show mean nothing when the legal system is involved. Naz adapts to life on Rikers Island while awaiting trial, and is joined by a cast that includes Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire, Boardwalk Empire) as Freddy Knight,  John Turturro (Do The Right Thing) as Jack Stone, and Amara Karen (Darjeeling Limited) as Chandra Kapoor. All of these actors suit their roles perfectly. No one character ever steals the spotlight for one another, they fit their actors perfectly. One of my favorite things about The Night Of  is that every scene is so pulsating and heart pounding, it seems like if you take your eye off the TV for just one second, you’ll miss everything. Deliberate, but never stale, The Night Of is a perfect show to binge through in a week, and the best show HBO has premiered in a while.

You can check out the show on HBO Now and HBO Go, both places offer a free trial, where you can stream The Night Of right away. Make sure to check out the trailer, below!

 RJ’s Rating:

5/5 Stars