The Case Isn’t Closed: 10 Years On, HBO's The Night Of Still Deserves Season 2
The gripping series is primed to crack open another case—bigger stakes, sharper twists, and suspects hiding in plain sight.
HBO practically wrote the modern playbook for crime TV. Oz, The Wire, The Sopranos, True Detective — a run like that sets expectations. In 2016, the network dropped The Night Of, an eight-episode gut-punch that hit harder than it looked on paper and, strangely, has never been revisited.
How it came together
Here is one of those wonky behind-the-scenes turns: one of the last projects James Gandolfini was developing before he passed was an American remake of the UK series Criminal Justice. The show moved forward, and John Turturro stepped into the role Gandolfini had been circling. Riz Ahmed — fresh off breaking out in Nightcrawler — co-led the series, with Michael Kenneth Williams and Bill Camp rounding out a stellar supporting cast.
Why everyone thought it was the Serial show
The timing was eerie. Around the same period, a certain podcast exploded and turned true crime into a weekly ritual. Sarah Koenig walked listeners through the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee and the conviction of Adnan Syed — a Pakistani-American defendant who insisted he was innocent — layering in interviews and new reporting week by week. It changed what podcasts could be.
The Night Of follows Nasir Khan (Ahmed), a Pakistani-American college kid who meets Andrea (Sofia Black-D'Elia), spends a hazy night of drugs and sex with her, and wakes up in a nightmare as the prime suspect in her killing. Both stories revolve around a young Pakistani-American man tangled up in a murder case involving someone he knew, both spotlight how the system can fail the people inside it, and both leave maddening loose ends. Viewers naturally assumed HBO had adapted the podcast. It did not. The Night Of actually went into production before the podcast even debuted — the overlap was just impossible to miss.
Reception, and the True Detective rebound fantasy
Critics went wild for the show. It sits at 94% positive on Rotten Tomatoes and pulled in a stack of awards attention. Riz Ahmed won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, with Turturro also nominated in the same category — a tough room if you are anyone else.
It also arrived right after True Detective Season 2, which many fans considered a comedown from that show’s first season. Some people hoped The Night Of would scratch the same itch. It does not try to. This is less a whodunit and more a how-does-this-destroy-you — a slow, clinical look at what the criminal justice machine does to everyone it touches.
So, will there be a Season 2?
The format leaves the door wide open. Like the UK’s Criminal Justice, which ran for two seasons, this premise can reset with a new case and cast without breaking a sweat. The people behind the show have flirted with the idea over the years. Back in 2020, Turturro said:
"We have a couple of ideas but we have to sit down and discuss them, so we are at that stage so that is good."
That is the last meaningful breadcrumb. Nothing has materialized since.
Where to watch
Whether or not we ever get more, the eight episodes we have are a tight, bruising watch, streaming now on Max.