Nasir Khan (Riz Ahmed) has humble ambitions: Helping academia-averse jocks pass math tests, making it home to Jackson Heights in time for dinner with his family, going to a party on a Saturday night where he could maybe, just maybe, meet some girls.

As if some cosmic force is bent on molding his life into a morality tale, Naz's efforts to make this last wish come true derail his entire existence. A benign transgression (borrowing the taxi his dad owns with a couple of other guys without asking permission first) and mechanical failure (he can't get the "Off-Duty" light to turn on) set him up to meet a young white woman who, within hours of meeting the Pakistani-American Naz, will wind up dead in her own bed.

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HBO's new procedural thriller, The Night Of, is technically about filling in the blanks: What really happened that night? But as the series unfolds, it becomes less of a whodunit and more of an investigation of our justice system and the myriad injustices and bureaucratic bullshit therein.

On the night Naz will likely spend the rest of his existence longing to undo, he is prompted by the mystery girl to skip his party plans, do a battery of drugs and drink and drink and drink and yeah, sure, maybe just one more line, and look at her with a wide-eyed wow-is-this-really-going-to-happen stare until she leans in for a kiss. They have sex; they pass out. Naz is just fumbling for his pants and his excuses for leaving so abruptly when he realizes her body is slick with blood, lacerated all over, and lifeless. The nature of the murder will feel familiar to anyone who watched either of this spring's offerings on O.J. Simpson, both of which include the gruesome detail that Nicole Brown Simpson was stabbed so viciously her head was nearly severed from her neck. The Night Of's victim has more knife wounds than the police can count on site.

HBO

Naz panics, bolts, and—talk about a rough night—gets pulled over for the unrelated offense of driving while wasted. The police who stop him get called to the scene of, what do you know, a terrifically graphic murder, and Naz is stuck coming along for the ride back to the place he just fled and eventually to the police station. The likely murder weapon is hot in his jacket pocket. The scene in which—thanks to one cop's sharp spidey sense—Naz is searched at the station just as Detective Box (Bill Camp) is describing to the desk officer the manner in which the victim was killed is a perfect heart-stopper of a moment. The absurdity and horror overlap so completely, it's like watching an eclipse.

As 'The Night Of' unfolds, it becomes less of a whodunit and more of an investigation of our justice system and the myriad injustices and bureaucratic bullshit therein.

It's a testament to Ahmed's thoughtful, endearing performance, and the eyes so wide he's barely got space on his face for a forehead—the desk officer offhandedly refers to him as "Bambi," and it's almost too on-point to bear—that you are desperately waiting for some other explanation for how, in the fog of a night Naz cannot remember, some other person could be responsible for this murder.

We meet Naz's real, and possibly only, ally in this bloodbath near the premiere's close: lawyer Jack Stone (John Turturro, in the role that was to be played by James Gandolfini; a few scenes from a 2013 pilot were the last he shot before his death, and he is credited in this production as an executive producer). He is the first person to acknowledge Naz's race in an intelligent way—it will not surprise you to hear Naz is on the receiving end of plenty of terrorism jokes—as he asks, with nuance, where in Pakistan Naz's mother is from. Stone does not exude the cool control of Box; he's a little scrappier, like Better Caul Saul's Jimmy McGee.

HBO

The weakness in The Night Of is right there in the inciting incident: The murder victim is a moody pixie dream girl who slides into Naz's cab apparently for the sole purpose of giving him the sexy, nightmare-logic-fueled night of his life. She is a mystery to him and, by extension, a mystery to us, a woman whose name he doesn't learn—it's Andrea, for whatever that's worth—who doesn't get much of a personality before she meets her untimely demise. She could have been a person; instead, she's a plot device.

Of course she is, as the cops describe her, white, female, early 20s. If your sole source of information on homicide in the United States came from popular culture, you might think that the only people who ever get murdered are telegenic white women under the age of 30. (In reality, 79 percent of all homicide victims globally are male.) And, one more "of course" to top this list off, she is killed after having sex. Her dead body, which we see plenty of, is naked. Did you know it's impossible to be killed while clothed? It is if you're hot!

That aside, The Night Of is a smart, unnerving noir, a series that borrows the gloomy atmospheric quality of True Detective (Season One, I promise), is littered with The Wire alumni, and trades in the same methodical play-by-play that made smashes of Netflix's Making a Murderer and Serial. You finish the premiere hungry for the next installment, haunted by that gnawing feeling that there's too much you don't know.

Jessica M. Goldstein Jessica Goldstein is a writer covering all things culture.

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