I was thinking of The Night Of, forgetting that was Moffat too, adapted from his UK series Criminal Justice. It begins in a strong, Hitchcockian way, when a young man (Hunter Doohan) leaves a memento for his mom in a dodgy ghetto, is chased away, has an asthma attack, then accidentally kills another young man on a motorbike... Panics, runs away. Lovely great 'show don't tell' writing. His father is a well-meaning judge, played by Bryan Cranston, who initially tells his son to confess.. but when he realises the victim is the son of the head of the worst crime gang in New Orleans, changes the plan. More black irony arises when a friend, a political campaigner, offers to get rid of the hit and run Volvo, but the young black gang member (Lamar Johnson) stealing it is himself stopped by the cops and the car returned.
Is this a ten hour story? That's always the question. I am reminded of the Emperor in Amadeus - 'Too many notes.' To put it another way - can you tell this story in three hours? Yes - strip out some unnecessary characters and storylines. What does the extra time give you? Dog stuff. Gang stuff. Romantic sub-plots. Political sub-plots. Police corruption. (The one bit of unnecessary stuff I liked was Stuhlbarg winding up his wife by insisting he wants his gazpacho heated up.)
The other thing was I was hoping the smart guy judge would find a clever way out of his predicament, which would have made a much more pleasing storyline. Instead, it's something of a reworking of Breaking Bad, in that the initially sound and upright guy becomes more and more corrupted. The circularity of the ending is quite successful, though, for after all, Cranston has, no matter how innocently, caused the death of the young man's entire family.
They seem to live in a way too big house, too.
With A Serious Man's Michael Stuhlberg convincing as the crime boss, Hope Davis as his awful wife, Carmen Ejogo, Lilli Kay (gangster's daughter), Sofia Black D'Ella (the teacher), Margo Martindale, Amy Landecker (cop), Isiah Whitlock Jr (politician, The Wire), Benjamin Flores Jr (young gang member). Andrene Ward-Hammond makes an impression as the gang leader.
It's based - somewhat improbably - on an Israeli series called Kvodo. Photographed by John Lindley (Pleasantville) and James Friend (three episodes). Liked Volker Bertelmann's theme.
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