The Long Night is a Mystery/Crime drama with its ups and downs, its tears and teeth clenching moment. A drama with its short-comings but one I would recommend.

1. "Sleepness Night": 5/5★★★★★
The second most talk-about mystery drama this year is "the Long Night," written by the same author of "the Bad Kids." Though both are very dim dramas showing society's dark side, it is very different from "the bad kids." In terms of storytelling, the long night has more typical crime-solving mystery elements: righteous detectives searching for the truth by uncovering villains' evil doings. Therefore, this drama knowingly steers the viewers into what it wants them to feel in certain moments. And it does this brilliantly. The investigations unfold in two, almost three, parallel periods, but the events flow seamlessly into each other without causing a lot of confusion. Though the ending and the main villains are quickly revealed in the drama, the show still kept viewers at the edge of their seats by slowly uncovering the story of our first main detective, Jiang Yang, and his "hotpot friends" who helped him along the way. Using pieces of a photo, a piece of clear evidence, the viewer only knows what crime the villains commit to all the bloodshed towards the drama's end. Finally, there is the reveal of why and how Jiang Yang's body was disposed of in the subway that showed us the real tragedy of this character. Speaking of storytelling for mystery, this is best in class.

2. "Emotional Rollercoaster": 5/5★★★★★
Jiang Yang's tragic life story is the highlight of this drama. It shows his almost decade fight to serve justice to someone he hasn't even met and present the villains what they deserve. And we all know that his struggle was not fruitful. The reality destroyed a motivated and bright young man, his career, his family, and eventually his life. This really brought me to tears. There are moments in this drama when I doubt whether this kind of character would ever exist in real life. But there is a brilliant dialogue between Yan Liang and Zhu Wei at the water bottle factory that perfectly explained why Jiang Yang and his friends never stopped fighting. Big applause to the actor Bai Yu's performance, who depicted Jiang Yang's multi-dimensional personality perfectly.

3. "Natural and intelligent Storytelling.": 4/5★★★★☆
This is one aspect at which I would deduct one point is the crime itself. The drama focused on mystery-solving but forgot to reality check a few of the story's key elements. Though I did not expect a mastermind level of crime, I felt that every wall that Jiang Yang's team hit was all very crude and almost repetitive. They use the same villain or the same method, and it is just not very well-though through. Therefore, it was also surprising why Jiang Yang's team could not pre-empt some of these actions. As if nothing could have prevented Yang Liang's tragic death. In contrast, the investigation conducted by detective Yan Liang's team went relatively smoothly without any significant interruptions by the villain. I could find ten ways how the villains could have prevented the pieces of photos from being slowly revealed by the newspaper. But all in all, storytelling has been brilliant in solving the mystery and building the tension.

4. "Loveable supporting Roles.": 4/5★★★★☆
The show has a great supporting cast who all did a great job in depicting their roles. My favorites were the entire extended "hot pot team," whose actors all did a marvelous job.
A few roles were not very deep and slightly tool-like, e.g., Yan Liang's team, including his partner Ren Yue Lin. The drama tried in some scenes to evoke the viewer's emotions but did not successfully achieve that. Also, the entire villain team was evil, but nothing more than that. For example, I would love to know what goes through the policeman Li Jiang Go's mind when he continued to betray the career he has spent his life performing. The same goes for "Yellow Hair", who was brilliant as the gangster. What happened to him at the end? I do not support the drama spending useless time on characters who are not important to the main plot, but some important ones could have been more three-dimensional.

5. "Proper Pacing.": 5/5★★★★★
With only 12 episodes, the pace was quick, the turns unexpected, and the events impactful.

6. "Technicalities": 4/5★★★★☆
Overall the show is well executed in terms of technical aspects. Two elements that could be improved: I am not sure if I can remember the show's BGM, and the lighting of the entire drama can be a bit too dark sometimes.

7. "Solid Finale": 4/5★★★★☆
*****Spoilers******
Like my critique in point number 3, I find the drama had a "too perfect ending". On the surface, Detective Yan Liang used his brilliance to solve the mystery of the subway and helped to clear Jiang Yang's name. But in reality, the true villains were only caught because the third witness came to light (who might have been able to turn the case if she did that in the first place). The subway mystery would have come to light in any case as this was performed by the "good guys". Also, I wouldn't say I liked how Chinese "censorship" cleared the police's name as they realize they have to punish the evil and honor the braves, such as our main lead. The last dialogue between the police's directors felt staged. All villain's punishments were written as text on the screen so quickly you cannot read the description, and the audience is left with a feeling of unbalancing and slight dissatisfaction.

Despite some critiques, I would still highly recommend this drama to anyone who likes good mystery/crime drama.

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Kotori's drama review seven criteria definition:

After having watched many dramas and also written several reviews. I have detected that I rate dramas based on specific patterns. I formulated those into seven criteria.
1. "Sleepless Nights.": how much I have the urge to binge-watch this drama.
2. "Emotional Rollercoaster": the degree of how much my heart was moving from the acting, scenes, and story development (e.g., in pain, pounding, fluster etc.). The degree on how much I care about the fate of the main leads.
3. "Natural and intelligent Storytelling.": how logically the story was able to proceed and the roles are acting within their characters. I don't have a thousand question marks when watching the drama. The feeling that the makers take us viewers seriously and that we do not always think that this looks fake.
4. "Loveable supporting Roles.": how much I love and care about supporting characters. They are not merely tools to help the main characters but are 3-dimensional and have the proper motivation behind their actions.
5. "Proper Pacing.": how well the drama is pacing and not watered down to fill the number of episodes.
6. "Technicalities": professional camera works and shots, fight scenes, color grading, lighting, editing, music, sets, costumes, use of CGI etc. I try to grade this in relation to the drama budget, so a low-budget drama can equally get a high score when used at the right place
7. "Solid Finale": how properly the drama builds dramatic and finishes with a satisfactory ending. I have just watched too many dramas that start to lose their grip around half or 2/3rd of its way.