True Detective is an anthology series in which each 8-episode season features a new pair of law enforcement people investigating (a) new and ever grislier murder(s). The show, created by Nic Pizzolatto, debuted a decade ago in 2014, with real-life Texas friends Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey playing a couple of mismatched partners who are investigating a
mysterious and deeply disturbing set of crimes. Five years after the third season was shown in January 2019 we're finally treated to Season 4, with Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as yet another mismatched set of reluctant police ex-partners, and also featuring the long-underappreciated fine actor John Hawkes, as well as English actor Christopher Eccleston and Irish actress Fiona Shaw. This crime takes place in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle, where the entire complement of researchers in a station go missing and are eventually found out frozen solid in the huge layer of ice (at least up to their heads, faces still caught frozen in terror). Aspects of the case, including a human tongue
cut from a victim (or perhaps even an unknown perpetrator), harken back to the case of murder of an Indigenous woman years before, worked on by our two unlikely protagonists. This new season definitely looks like the best since the first; I rate it 9/10 so far, with my usual caveat about adjusting it as we progress to the end.
Review of Night Country: Part 1
