Criminal Justice

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To watch or not to watch: Better watch the original BBC Criminal Justice or the American series The Night Of

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Starring: Vikrant Massey, Pankaj Tripathi, Jackie Shroff, Mita Vashist
An innocent man Aditya (Vikrant Massey) is in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is regular college student, looking to get to a party by driving his father’s cab. A pretty, rich girl gets into his cab looking to hire and asks him to take her from one location to another and was obviously on drugs. Because of the delay, he misses his party and the girl invites him over to her place, where they drink alcohol, do drugs and have sex. Aditya wakes up in the middle of the night and finds the girl stabbed to death. He remembers nothing and tries to flee the scene of the crime with the murder weapon in hand. Ensues a long legal battle, Madhav Misra (Pankaj Tripathi) being the constant as legal help on the outside, even though he is way out of his depth in this case. Aditya also becomes street smart in the jail with Mustafa’s (Jackie Shroff) help, who runs a gang in the jail. The whole experience strips Aditya of his innocence and takes his family through emotional, financial and societal roller coaster.
The series is a play-by-play adaptation of The Night Of starring Riz Ahmed and John Tuturro, which is in turn an adaptation of the BBC series called Criminal Justice.
It is a 10 episode series which could have just as easily been wrapped up in 5; it is unnecessarily stretched. Pankaj Tripathi outshines everyone as always, playing the role of a down-on-his-luck lawyer with the heart of gold with élan. He is eccentric with little social skills and gives comic relief along with intensity seamlessly. Vikrant Massey is believable as a wronged college student and the character arc throughout the series is heartwarming. Jackie Shroff is given a lot of screen time to appease the star of yesteryear and is the only actor the series could have done without. If someone is watching the series, they can simply skip the parts with him in them.
There is nothing exceptional or attention grabbing in the direction or cinematography – it is primarily about acting and secondarily about the plot. It could have been much better if the social issues like the drug abuse amongst youngsters and class discrimination had been woven into the story line and made part of the reason of accusation, but they lost a lot of opportunity to make the series stand for something and be more than just storytelling. Viewers can easily swap Criminal Justice with The Night Of, which is also on Hotstar.