The Night Of: Blu-ray + Digital HD

This show is amazing! It's easily one of the best mini series I've ever watched. From the first episode on it kept my wife and I glued to the TV. We binge watched the whole thing in 3 nights on HBO. The story is very well written. As far as a crime story goes it's kind of typical. There is a crime committed. Someone is accused. His lawyers spend the series defending him and developing a defense while the prosecutors develop a case against him. So that part isn't new or unique.But the characters are what sells the show. Every character has depth that just sucked you into the story. It's like you are there in the show with them because everyone seems to real. For example (extremely minor and unimportant spoiler alert...the next line contained info that occurs in the first episode. It's not critical to the plot and will not ruin anything fro you I swear) there are two cops in the first episode. They are New York City beat cops who have very minor roles in the series. Basically someone has to make an arrest so they wrote in these two cops to do it. Yet despite their very minor status and limited screen time you learn a lot about them as individual people. They become very three dimensional even though they probably don't really need to be for story telling purposes.You see the same thing with all the characters. One of the main characters has a skin disorder. Why? It's not integral to the plot. The story could easily survive without this element. But it makes the character more robust and makes him feel more real to the audience. Another character always listens to opera when driving. Why? Again...this adds nothing to the story, but adds a lot of depth to the character. It makes him different. Every character has something like that. Each cop has different personality and quirks that prevent them from all looking like generic background characters. Same goes for the prisoners in the jail scenes. (That's not a spoiler. It's a legal drama. You have to expect jail scenes)Then there is the attention to detail of the legal proceedings and jail scenes. They are a little modified for entertainment purposes. (The jail is a little scarier than actual jails, but not much. I speak from experience having worked in and toured numerous jails and prisons, thankfully always as an observer and not a resident. The court scenes are a little more streamlined to make them go faster. Real court is the single most boring thing on the planet with tons and tons of procedure and document exchanges and such. It has to be sped up and streamlined a bit to make it a watchable drama.) But the overall accuracy showing how police work is conducted and what a crime scene unit does and how prosecutors care about the politics of a case and how mistakes get made, etc etc.. It's all very believable.The writing keeps you guessing. It does not spoon feed you what actually happened in the crime up front. It leads you down many possible paths of the crime so you keep guessing. That keeps it interesting. It's not like they tell you the main character is guilty and show how he defends himself, nor does it show you the main character is innocent and then shows you how he tried exonerate himself. This one tells you the results of the crime, not the details. The rest of the series is about getting that figured out. You don't know who to believe / trust / or suspect.Then there is the acting. Holy cow this is where the show just goes to another level. There is not a single bad actor on the show. And by 'not bad' I mean they are all fabulous. There are a few familiar faces from The Wire, including Michael Williams (Omar Little from The Wire). He is an absolutely fantastic actor. He gets type cast into a lot of roles of criminals because he's a mean looking dude due to a big scar across his face. For a non criminal role he is in a show called Hap and Leonard where he plays a southern country bumpkin type and nails it. The man can flat out act.John Tuturro is amazing in anything he does. And I do mean anything. From The Jesus in The Big Lebowski to a goofy role like he had in the Transformers series. Here he has a very dramatic role that he brings to life. His character has so many odd quirks that it's amazing he can keep it consistent. But he does it perfectly.Riz Ahmed is the central character of the show. I can't say too much about how he makes his character perfect without giving away important plot details. But the short version is that he makes his character grow substantially in both good and bad ways between the beginning and end of the show. Becoming a character is tough enough for an actor. Becoming a character then appropriately developing that character in response to the story so he changes with the plot is REALLY hard. Ahmed is perfect at it.The bottom line is that this show is incredible. I had never heard of it until my wife said "Let's watch this" three days ago. Now I'm done the series. I didn't even find that it left you wanting more. It's just a well scripted 8 episodes that entertains you and stops when it should.

"The Night Of" is one of those redeeming TV Shows on HBO that reminds you that television can be just as much of a high art as great cinema. The show focuses on a young South East Asian boy from a working class family in the outer boroughs of NYC. He's a good kid who works hard just like his parents. He's a smart kid with a future. One evening after his college classes, he decides he wants to go to a friend's party. Stood up by his friend with a car, he takes his dad's taxi to get to the party, which is the first of a huge series of mistakes that leads to his eventual arrest for a murder that we're not entirely sure if he committed (although from the doe-eyed look on the young man's face when he's getting arrested), we suspect he likely has done no wrong. We experience a young man's tribulations, his family's suffering, and the social fabric of society in relation to a bombastic case that seems written for news headlines. We see an imperfect justice system that corrodes the soul. We see how even the eventual delivery of justice can be poor recompense for the traumas of incarceration. We witness a good kid become a scarred felon in a matter of months. We watch, in helplessness, as a young man's life forever implodes for him and the ones he loves. Most of all, we see how a series of poor decisions can lead a perfectly good person into a terribly bad situation with no escape. And how the pressure of that situation can change a person's soul.

The Night Of was amazing. I watched all of it over the last few evenings and was very impressed. I recently spent about 7 years in prison (not in New York) and parts of it were hard to watch because of the authentic feel they managed to create in the Rikers Island scenes. Not that it was a completely accurate depiction of life in prison, it really couldn't be if they wanted it to be very entertaining, but they managed to capture some of the feel very well. The noise was particularly impressive. Nothing defines a maximum security as well as the constant yelling, the doors slamming, and the locks buzzing on and off all day and night.I also enjoyed their willingness to highlight some aspects of the justice system that are usually downplayed or ignored. This isn't a forum for my opinions on the D.O.C. and the courts, so I'm not going to go into specifics. But the willingness, until the very last minute, of the prosecutor to hang somebody that she was becoming less and less confident was guilty, and then only letting go because it kept her from having to retry something that she wasn't sure she could win, had the ring of truth to it.

- Kudos to HBO for attracting such amazing talent time and time again!!!! How can they continue to spit out gems in the likes of The Wire, The Sopranos, The Pacific, The Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood, True Detective (Season #1), Westworld, etc....? Now with Big Lies, and The Night Of, they have done it again!!!! This series was such a treat! The writing, the plot, the acting, directing, and editing.... everything! Riz Ahmed was incredible - you cannot take your eyes off of him. His Emmy win was well deserved! John Turturro - what a treat his understated character was! It provided us with such humanity and much needed humor relief in this dark drama. Loved his fight with eczema and his love for the stray cat, in the midst of a brutal murder trial. Such writing genius! Michael K. Williams has a nose for good series. Who can forget him from the Wire or The Boardwalk Empire?! What a great actor he is! The icing on the cake is that this series was also produced by the unforgettable James Gandolfini! Top series!!!!!! Loved every minute of it.