The Night Of Episode 1: The Beach Rating: 4.5/5
HBO’s latest limited-series, The Night Of has travelled a long way to make it to television screens. Initially titled Criminal Justice like the BBC series it was adapted from, the show was supposed to star James Gandolfini, who still appears in the billing as executive producer of the show. Several changes later — including having John Turturro step into Gandolfini’s shoes — The Night Of is finally being aired, and it has been worth every bit of the wait.
Riz Ahmed stars as the docile Nasir ‘Naz’ Khan who resides in sleepy Queens in New York. Naz’s Pakistani origin family is the textbook definition of a happy immigrant family, with the dad driving a cab and the mom working in a store. While establishing the characters, the show’s makers have seen to it that Naz’s intelligent, soft-spoken demeanour stands out.
Borrowing his dad’s cab to go to a party with his friends, Naz gets stuck ferrying a rather peculiar, enigmatic lady, who does not wish to spend the night alone. What follows is a drug, booze and sex filled night for Naz and the girl — later identified as Andrea Cornish.
Naz finds Andrea dead after waking up from a blackout in the middle of the night. In his panic, he ends up getting detained by the police, and later nailed for being the guy who may have killed Andrea. The show rather beautifully leads Naz down the path of his doom, with every step that he takes throwing him deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. You can’t help but sympathise with and root for the poor, little good boy — which, this reviewer believes will be the downfall of the viewer eventually — who has found himself in an unlikely, horrid situation. A sense of foreboding gnaws at you throughout the episode.
Now trapped in the criminal justice system, Naz is constantly insisting that he isn’t guilty, while his obvious connections to the crime stick out like a sore thumb. Enter Turturro, as the eczema-foot afflicted lawyer, who is going to represent Naz in this case. It may be too early to call it, but Turturro is bound to put up a sublime show in the next few episodes.
The cast of The Night Of is stellar, with even the minor characters, like the overworked cops, and the witness who hurls Islamophobic comments at Naz being cut out carefully. Bill Camp, who plays detective Box is another person who stands out, and Poorna Jagannathan, as Safar Khan, Naz’s mom, is looking like a character with potential waiting to explode.
With the episode being just a tad longer at 1 hour 20 minutes, compared to the 58-minute fares dished out by networks, The Beach can get into excruciating details that could’ve been trimmed around the edges. Nevertheless, The Night Of is a mini-series that absolutely deserves your attention. With the podcast Serial and Netflix’s Making a Murderer capturing imaginations, the show could not have been better timed.
The Night Of airs on Star World Premier HD on Wednesdays at 10 pm.
