HBO's The Night Of: 8 Reasons It's The New True Detective

Famously, Nic Pizzolatto wrote all of True Detective Season 1, with Cary Fukunaga directing every episode. That helped give it a unique and consistent look and feel throughout those eight episodes, making the show exactly to their specifications. The trick didn't quite work in Season 2; Pizzolatto didn't have as much time to write the story, and Fukunaga didn't direct at all, with various people handling each episode, and it's part of a litany of problems with the second season.

The Night Of is created by novelist Richard Price and screenwriter/director Steven Zaillian. The pair have written all of the episodes here, with Zaillian directing all but one episode (which falls to The Theory of Everything's James Marsh).

It gives the project a sense of total cohesion, and much like True Detective's first season it begins to unfold more like a novel (Pizzolatto was working on novels before True Detective). Price, who worked on The Wire, is clearly at home in this sort of territory, crafting a litany of characters who exist with various shades of grey, no one outrightly bad, all just doing the best they can with the hand they've been dealt.

Zaillian (whose directorial efforts thus far (e.g. All The King's Men) haven't quite matched his screenplays (e.g. Schindler's List)) doesn't do anything overtly flashy, but does a masterful job of framing his characters as a means of offering depth and perspective, and following their point of view, while also building tension throughout.