The Night Of

You might be wondering what I’m doing talking this week about something from 2016, but over the previous 197 posts I think we’ve established well enough there is no method to my madness.  The Night Of was one of the first boxsets recommended to me at the very beginning of this project, and it’s been lodged in my brain ever since.  It even got downloaded (by me, on purpose) to my Sky box at the start of the year when I finally decided that I must get down to following up on its recommendation.  But there it stayed, cruelly ignored while I worked through Fargo and a variety of other Netflix trappings (Call My Agent!, Last Chance U: Basketball).  But then, with Oscars season upon us, its star, Riz Ahmed, was everywhere.  I needed to see what all the fuss was about and conveniently had a slot in my viewing schedule.

I’m ruing the day I didn’t dive in as soon as this show was recommended to me.  Episode one immediately got its claws into me and I tingled with smugness at the thought of finding something to watch that was not going to disappoint.  There was intrigue from the first minute, all against a backdrop of the much-missed city of New York (what with foreign travel being an impossible offence while the sniffles keeps on going round the world).  Knowing something terrible is going to happen: there’s nothing more compelling than that.  From the moment Nasir (played by Ahmed with wide-eyed conviction) gets invited to a Manhattan party from his Pakistani enclave of Queens, the show’s very title makes it clear this isn’t just a pleasant evening in the city.

I’m not going to get into too many details, as these would all be spoilers, and I know for a fact you’ll be following my pleas to see for yourself this exquisite boxset.  Needless to say, there’s a certain amount of being led astray, of trying things for the first time and of cutting loose from a conservative upbringing while potentially ill-equipped to deal with its consequences that makes this fateful night all the more significant.  The tension then takes hold, with us as the viewer violently willing Nas to slip out of the precinct while awaiting processing for his initial misdemeanour.  Cleverly, we are left in doubt regarding his innocence as far as the evidence shows, but we are desperate for him to be cleared of all charges at almost any cost.

Along the way, every character that enters the universe of The Night Of comes with such depth and richness that we almost don’t notice Nas’s long absences while they work their way into our lives.  John Turturro’s John Stone oozes New Yorker, hardened and brash, and with no shits left to give about what anyone thinks of him or any of his skin conditions (at least, so his outer shell would have us believe).  I did wonder at the size of his out-of-home advertising budget as his Subway posters are everywhere, especially if he only charges $250 a case.  Nas’s parents do a huge amount with very little, dignity burning behind their eyes, while Detective Dennis Box earns our sympathy as he retires and Helen Weiss, the district attorney, even as she works against us, carries a certain charm.  The Wire’s Michael K. Williams haunts as Freddy, showing us everything that’s wrong with the American justice system.

That said, it was the cat that I got most excited about.  It just goes to show that great writing and great character development are lost on me when there’s a purring feline rolling about on the floor.  I felt I could have cured John Stone’s allergies simply by wishing them away.  So, from New York night life, the episodes progress to a taut court case.  At points, all seems lost.  At others, the characters’ behaviour aggravates both you as the viewer and their own sorry situations.  But we’re kept guessing till the end, fed some red herrings to keep us going and distracted by artful production design and cinematography from the fact this is (apparently) a rehash of a 2008 British show.  I don’t care where it came from, this gem was a great find, and maybe the story is more universal than as specifically New York as I had thought, but it’s elevated by so much else that it’s definitely one for the boxset list.