The Night Of: Die Wahrheit einer Nacht

What struck me after watching the first episode of "The Night Of" is that this is a story that has been told on countless iterations of "Law and Order". The difference is the luxury of not having to tell it in 40 minutes and the bringing to bear of HBO's prodigious production values combined with a first-rate cast of mostly little-known actors.

The portrayal of the police is unlike anything I've seen before: annoyance about working past the end of a shift, the passing of the buck so someone else gets a case that will doubtless go into the wee hours of the morning, the careless handling of evidence due to available manpower. Here the police are neither heroes nor villains, rather they're just working men and women doing a job.

The atmosphere of the precinct house in the middle of the night is palpable as is the overwhelming sense of helplessness felt by the naive lead character as his night goes from bad to worse. John Torturro's portrayal of a low rent defense attorney who stumbles onto a case much bigger than he imagined holds great promise for future episodes.

As I said at the beginning, it's hardly a story we've not seen before but we've never seen it told this well. I look forward to watching it develop.

Really, really like this one. Right off I liked several of the characters, and as the first episode unfolded I was drawn more and more into the story line. The acting is very good, the dialogue intelligent, and the characters are real. The first episode has me anxiously awaiting the next one. As events unfolded and things got more and more complicated, I could almost put myself in his place and wondered what in the world would I do if this happened to me.

I have watched a lot of series over the years and this one is right up there with the best I have seen. Usually go for the hard hitting action series like Banshee, 24, Prison Break, Strike Back, Vikings, etc. This one is very much different from them, but I found myself drawn to it right from the opening scene.

What I like about this kind of series is that the story is good by itself but its by no means outstanding. The most important aspect is the storytelling, the presentation, the psychological tour of the characters, the portrayal of different cultures, and family, and relationships, and professions. That's the most impressive thing about this series.

One of the most fascinating things about shows like this is the characters itself are so rich. I've seen very few TV shows that covers extremely sophisticated characters like Matthew on True Detective, and this girl on 'The Night of', and Naz himself. For me, just focusing on the story line for the sole purpose of entertainment is like just focusing on guitar sounds in a piece of music.

This is the reason why I love the first season of True Detective, and this is the same reason why I love this series just after one episode.

Let me start off by saying there are alot of positives to this show: acting(specifically John Turturro's plea for Nas near the end), suspense, drama, and Riz Ahmed's breakout role. However the ending was a bit underwhelming for me. It seemed like the show was building up to this grand finale and the ending was just anticlimactic. Thats about all I can say without giving anything away; but this show was neither bad nor great to me.

HBO's new crime drama 'The Night Of' has sucked me in right from the very beginning. The pilot starts up very slow but builds suspense as it starts to tell the story, and that's where it shines; in it's storytelling. It was dramatically convincing and had a pleasantly dark atmosphere.

The pilot was very long (1hr 20min) but it felt much shorter, it was tense from start to finish, in the sense of the story it was actually very predictable, but it was the acting and how the story was portrayed that made it so gripping and watchable. Not a second went by where my attention wasn't glued to the TV screen.

What really made me love the pilot was how REAL the story felt, there wasn't a moment that made me think that it was a stupid story, it felt REAL. The acting was superb by everyone, the cinematography was perfect with it's overall dark tone and lighting, and the music just set the scene playing in the background to the tone of the show.

The overall mood of the show has been set for the series, and if it stays at this standard for the rest of the series it will be an ultimate success. I look forward to where the rest of this series takes us! No complaints yet!

9/10