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‘The Night Of’ a gripping mystery

HBO miniseries appears to be simple but layers unfold

By Chuck Barney, East Bay Times
Published: July 10, 2016, 5:59am
3 Photos
Bill Camp in &quot;The Night Of.&quot; (Craig Blankenhorn/HBO)
Bill Camp in "The Night Of." (Craig Blankenhorn/HBO) Photo Gallery

All is forgiven, HBO.

With its mesmerizing new crime drama “The Night Of,” the premium cable network finally makes amends for subjecting us to the hideous second season of “True Detective.”

Like “True Detective” — and several other “limited series” of recent vintage — “The Night Of” expends its energy tracking a single murder case and its considerable ripple effects. Along the way, stars John Turturro and Riz Ahmed deliver marvelous, intensely felt performances.

Ahmed plays Nasir “Naz” Khan, a shy and mild-mannered Pakistani-American college student from Queens who impulsively steals his father’s taxi to attend a party in Manhattan. When an attractive, but troubled, young woman named Andrea (Sofia Black-D’Elia) gets into the cab and begins flirting with him, it looks like Nasir’s lucky night.

But happiness soon turns into horror. After a round of sex and drugs at her place, Nasir wakes up to find Andrea dead, the victim of 22 stab wounds. Did he kill her? The ample evidence seems to confirm that he did, but we don’t know for sure.

Enter Jack Stone (Turturro, in a role originally intended for James Gandolfini). He’s the Columbo of defense attorneys — a rumpled, world-weary guy with a hangdog demeanor and a wretched case of eczema. As with Columbo (played by Peter Falk in the famed NBC series), everyone underestimates Stone, and it’s easy to see why: He’s a small-time litigator who, as someone observes, looks like “a homeless dude.”

Initially, the jaded Stone seems solely interested in what this high-profile case can do for his reputation. When Nasir attempts to explain what really happened, Stone cuts him off. “I don’t want to be stuck with the truth,” he says. “Not until I have to be.”

But the more time Stone spends around Nasir and his devastated, cash-strapped parents, an empathetic side emerges. He knows they can be chewed up and spit out by a broken justice system. Moreover, he simply can’t believe this “Bambi”-like kid is capable of committing such a heinous act.

Social overtones

If you’re like me, you’re suffering from TV-mystery fatigue. Between all the weekly crime procedurals and limited series such as “Fargo,” “American Crime,” “The Killing” and others, we’ve been there and done that, ad nauseam. But in the capable hands of creators Steven Zaillian and Richard Price, this adaptation of a BBC series differentiates itself in enough ways to keep things fresh and riveting.

Rather than present a carousel of would-be killers as so many prime-time whodunits are prone to do, “The Night Of” invites you to ponder the fate of this single key suspect without trying to pull the wool over your eyes in the process. Did he do it? If he didn’t, who did and why? Is the soon-to-be-retired police detective (Bill Camp) making too many easy assumptions? Will the anti-Muslim tensions in the community further hamper Nasir’s chances of acquittal?

“The Night Of” dutifully delves into the social and political overtones — along with the emotional carnage — as it explores the police investigation and legal proceedings. And it takes on added layers when it follows Nasir to prison, where he is the proverbial fish out of water.

The miniseries unfolds in leisurely fashion — maybe too leisurely for some viewers. But it’s hard not to admire how carefully observed and precisely rendered the scenes are. The level of detail is extraordinary.

I’m predicting that “The Night Of” will become the next summer-binging obsession. HBO sent critics seven of the eight episodes for review, and I quickly blazed through them all. Now, I can hardly wait to see how it ends.

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