True Detective: Night Country

Haunting and chilling both literally and figuratively, season four of True Detective is set in a frozen corner of Alaska, a part of the world shrouded in darkness for part of the year in what locals call the “sunless season”. As Billie Eilish’s haunting Bury a Friend plays over the opening credits, we know we are in for a beautifully disturbing treat. What you can’t be prepared for is how dark this series is prepared to go.

This time we are transported to the snowy planes of a fictional town named Ennis, to follow the investigation behind the disappearance of eight men from a research station. At first, the soulless town looks like a place where a murder or disappearance would be commonplace, but the unanswered questions about the crime leave a never-ending sense of dread around every corner for Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis).

Despite being surrounded by endless and remote open land, you can’t help but feel claustrophobic about the action taking place on screen. As the plot thickens and the snow deepens you are suffocated by tension, and it feels as though the elements of horror have been turned up a notch in this series. Foster is a tour de force as the hard-nosed Danvers, instantly proving a toughened lead alongside Reis. It always seems the franchise is doomed if it does and doomed if it doesn’t because of the unreachable high bar that was set by season one, but Foster and Reis deliver the damn nearest thing to it.

Night Country is the first season without writer Nic Pizzolatto as showrunner, with Issa López fully taking the reins, but the transition isn’t noticeable at all – if anything, season four brings the most welcome return to form the franchise has seen in years. There is still an element of magic missing in the character depth, curiosity and structure of the storytelling of season one: the beauty of it hid in that fact the viewer never truly knew if they could trust McConaughey or Harrelson’s characters, but that was because the cultish villains they were hunting were set firmly in reality and the criminal underworld. There is a new approach this time with a focus on the spiritual world and the supernatural, creating a field of uncertainty for Danvers and Navarro to navigate and automatically making the viewer root for them against evil.

However, this instalment is the closest showrunners have come to emulating the critical acclaim for McConaughey and Harrelson’s era. As the series unravels, Danvers and Navarro lose more and more control, keeping you gripped right until the end, and the supporting cast, including Christopher Eccleston, Finn Shaw and John Hawkes, also play their part in keeping you hooked to the icy drama. True Detective: Night Country is yet another example of how to make intelligent first-class television.

Guy Lambert

True Detective: Night Country is released on Sky on 15^th January 2024.

Watch the trailer for True Detective: Night Country here: