THE NIGHT OF
HBO
THE NATIONAL POST

The story so far: Naz Khan, a mild-mannered student of Pakistani parentage living in Queens, is invited to a party in Manhattan. His lift lets him down so he borrows, without asking, the taxi of which his father is one-third owner-operator.

He doesn't know how to turn off the on-duty sign so he gets repeatedly hailed. And one of his would-be passengers he actually picks up: an attractive young woman who invites him to her brownstone, plies him with drink and drugs, and takes him to bed. He wakes up next morning in the kitchen, looks into the bedroom, and finds his hostess dead, her body covered in knife-wounds. Terrified, he drives away but is caught making an illegal left turn. The cops who arrest him are called away to the real crime scene, taking Naz with them. And so, inexorably, he finds himself, on strong circumstantial evidence, up on a murder charge. Denied bail, he awaits trial on the notorious Rikers Island.

That's what's happened in the first three episodes of The Night Of, the eight-part miniseries that's the best thing to happen to TV drama in general, and HBO in particular, since The Wire. There's more, of course. Towards the end of Episode One we meet Jack Stone, a down-on-his-luck attorney (it seems like he's always been down on his luck) prowling the police station where Naz is first held, and pricking up his ears at the chance of snagging a high-profile case. When Naz protests his innocence and insists that he's telling the truth, Stone shuts him up: "I don't need to be stuck with the truth. Not till I have to be. I need to be flexible." But apparently he can't be flexible enough. He asks Naz's parents for a retainer of $55,000 - a low fee but astronomically more than they can afford. He's outmanoeuvred by a another lawyer, a far more elegant and successful brand of ambulance-chaser, who offers to take on the case pro bono. It hardly seems cynical to assume that the good in that Latin phrase will mostly accrue to her: win or lose, it will be great publicity.

The Night Of is based on a British series (which I haven't seen) called Criminal Justice: a title with more bite to it, and a better indication of the show's real concerns. We're used to American TV re-doing British shows and ruining them (that includes House of Cards; it very much includes House of Cards) but in this case, title apart, I find it hard to believe that the original could have been better than the imitation.

The New York setting counts for a lot. Richard Price, writer, and Steven Zaillian, director, play it - in an insistent, low-key way - for all it's worth. The police-station scenes, spread across two weeks, staffed by weary and hard-bitten, but by no means malevolent professionals, builds up an extraordinary head of tension just by going slow and realistic. We could be sitting in any waiting room. There sat Naz, as yet accused of nothing worse than a traffic offence, and we wait for the net to close around him. I can't think of any show that has so powerfully communicated what it must be like to be caught up in the justice system, especially if you're innocent.

Of course we don't know that Naz is innocent. The show wants us to think so, at least for now, and we want to believe it because we like him, and because we've been seeing most of the story from his perspective. In Riz Ahmed's performance, sensitive and watchful, he's very sympathetic. It's possible that he committed a murder, before blacking out and forgetting, but it doesn't feel likely. We have glimpsed a couple of other conceivable suspects, but so far they've been peripheral. The show isn't behaving like a whodunit.

When we're not with Naz we are, mostly, with Stone, and we're similarly invested in him. However much he may profess indifference, we want to believe that he believes in Naz's innocence. The role was originally slated for James Gandolfini, and it's fascinating to imagine what he would have made of a character who is, on the face of it, so unlike Tony Soprano. Stone is a legal footsoldier, rather literally; he wears sandals all the time, as his feet are afflicted by terrible eczema. Robert de Niro was mentioned for the role after Gandolfini's death, but fortunately it went to John Turturro, who is wonderfully wry and tired and downbeat humorous. We certainly root for him against the lawyer who has supplanted him, and who commandeered an Indian junior from her office ("India? Pakistan? What's the difference?") to act as interpreter when she called on Naz's parents: this despite the fact that the Khan family all speak perfect English.

"It's a big club, the criminal justice system," says Detective Dennis Box, consummately played by Ian Camp, warning Naz against Stone because he scents competition. Stone might say the same about him, and with equal truth. Box is the quintessential good cop, both professionally and in the sense of the one who acts like he's on your side so that you'll confess. His demeanour isn't always that civilized, but he never loses his cool. "If I were to turn you upside down," he asks a black witness, "how much weed is going to fall out?" The same black man had previously greeted Naz on the street with, "Hey, Mustafa, you leave your bomb at home?" Another black guy, a client of Stone's, protests at being handed a longer sentence than the white-collar offender who preceded him, and is told by the judge, "You want Jew time, you do a Jew crime." This is the casual hierarchy of racism that the show suggests.

This show is real, freshly thought and written and performed, and truly disturbing. We not only want to know what happens next. We want to know how.