They certainly enlisted the talent for the first one: James Marsh (King of Thieves and The Theory of Everything), Robert Elswit (who manages to pull off the best rear view mirror shot since Taxi Driver - it may well have been a deliberate reference), Jay Cassidy (his three Oscar nominations were for American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook and Into the Wild; he won the Emmy for this), Patrizia von Brandenstein. Series composer is Jeff Russo (the Fargo series). Fred Elmes shot four of them.
Subsequent episodes show good visual writing, e.g. scene in which investigator Bill Camp traces the route of that night using mobile phone pings. Good cross-cutting between the investigations of him, John Turturro and Amara Karan (The Darjeeling Limited, A Fantastic Fear of Everything).
We thought he'd end up with the cat but didn't expect it to be kept in solitary confinement. (Loved the audio of the dogs in the shelter all kicking off every time the door is opened; hear it over the phone too - good touch.)
Then the sub-story about the foot condition is a good human touch. Nice to counter-balance the dehumanisation of Riz and his involvement with Michael K Williams (The Wire).
Also good: Riz's mum and dad Payman Maadi and Poorna Jagannathan. With Jeannie Berlin as the prosecutor. Riz has an opaque quality - you don't know what's going on in his head. Turturro is sympathetic and credible (it's also nice how many people know him).
It's based on the first (of two) series of Peter Moffat's Criminal Justice (2008) - a better title. Ultimately, it's a bit of a let-down as we don't know who dunnit (or even if Riz definitely didn't do it) - perhaps anticipating a second series, and speaks loudest about the effects of being in prison. And why show us that second stabbing murder only to do nothing with it?
A BBC / HBO co-production. It was originally to have starred James Gandolfini, who gets a posthumous exec producer credit, and it's dedicated to him.
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