I mean this as critique and compliment: I dont totally get it.
The central mysterys quite creaky, somehow obviousandincoherent.
But the show looks great.
Credit: Clay Enos/TNT
Too many current dramas signal their super-duper seriousness with a shadow-gray color palette.
WhereasI Am the Nightis magic-hour noir, shot on painterly film under sunlight as golden-glorious asChris Pines hair.
Its 1965, and Pat experiences the eras pervasive racism with a surreal twist.
She looks white enough to pass, to use a term from the bad old days.
She doesnt feel like she belongs anywhere and thatsbeforeshe finds out shes adopted.
Her real name is Fauna Hodel, a revelation that leads her to Los Angeles.
There she meets Jay Singletary (Pine), a proverbial drinker with a writing problem.
Jays a last-chance journalist, snapping tabloid pics of cheating celebs and chopped-up corpses.
And just like Mahershala Alis Wayne Hays onTrue Detective, Jays tormented by unfinished business.
Nightis a fictionalization rampant enough to include occasional cameos by a devil bull.
Fauna and Jay take their time circling toward each other.
Creator Sam Sheridan is working from a fascinating true story, but the onscreen investigation stretches credulity.
There are phone calls at just-right moments, and a dropped address book full of secrets.
Huzzah for the printed word, I guess, but you suspect someones smudging complex truth with procedural gloss.
And theres a straight-edge vibe toNight, halfway CBS-y.
Our pretty heroes face an evil axis of murderers, abortionists, Tinseltown mystics, and modernism.
Cliches about spooooooooky artist types abound.
Eisleys casting is tricky in some ways, but shes a captivating innocent self-realizing toward self-immolation.
And Pine makes great human wreckage.
Behind the scenes, its a family affair.
Showrunner Sheridan is married toWonder Womandirector Patty Jenkins, who helms the first two eps.
Franklin, in particular, brings a hallucinatory quality to material that gets steadily wilder.
Nightstumbles through some complex racial themes; to be blunt, its more comfortable with the rapey-murdery angle.
But theres sincere texture in the exploration of Faunas African-American family.
