Salim Kahn

Salim Kahn drives a cab through New York's night shift, the quiet engine of a Pakistani immigrant family holding fast to respectability and hope. He is proud of his son Naz, a good student bound for something better, and asks little more than that the boy stay out of trouble and bring the car back in one piece.

Payman Maadi plays ordinary decency without sentimentality — a father's love shown in worry lines and clipped, practical instructions rather than speeches. The show uses Salim's modest routine as the calm his son shatters, and Maadi makes that rupture land by first making the peace feel utterly real and worth protecting.