As a big fan of yinmidejiaoluo (The Bad Kids) I was looking forward to this show a lot. As far as The Bad Kids goes, I've learned that the book is even better than the show and can attest to that after having read it. Nevertheless, the show was excellent as well, so I was happy to learn the director and writer would work on another show.
Unfortunately The Long Night does not deliver. It opens strongly and for about two to three episodes, it seems to be heading somewhere interesting. It soon devolves into a run-of-the-mill good vs evil morality contest. Corruption is evil, police is good except for bad apples.
A more cynical viewer may even become put off by the heavy-handed propaganda of the Lei Feng-like charicature Jiang Yang, and constant reference to the weirenminfuwu (serve the people). It does not help that he is the worst actor in the ensemble, especially in the latter half of the show.
It boggles the mind why this show went this route, as both the show as well as book version of The Bad Kids had an excellent portrayal of the moral ambiguity of people. It is as if the writer of The Bad Kids was hired to do a moral propaganda piece. The subtlety is gone, the flavor nowhere to be found.
Ultimately, what we are left with is a show without depth whose content could have been put into a mediocre movie. I will still be looking forward to their next project, but the writer and director have lost some of the intrigue they built with The Bad Kids. Let's hope for a better show next.
