After episode one I am completely on board with this Jodie Foster incarnation of the series, one that I had stopped watching as it gradually sunk under the weight of its.own self-importance. The setting is beautifully stark and forbidding, the writing and direction are taut and the performances, many by actors who appear to be native to the arctic region, are terrific. They take their lead from Foster - tough, world-weary, sardonic, and of course, burdened with a mandatory tragic past we're getting hints of. She has a complicated relationship with her.deputy, played by the wonderful John Hawke, and his son, a rookie cop played by a relative newcomer named Finn Bennett. Bennett handles his scenes with Foster with a likeable combination of respect, frustration and terror, which makes complete sense, given Foster has the wired energy of an IED from The Hurt Locker. But Foster's most difficult relationship is with her ex partner, Evangeline Navarro, played with power by former boxer Kali Reis, haunted by an unsolved murder which may be connected to the murders that launch this season. There's racism, sexism, environmentalism versus a mine that is the basis of a town's economy, all exacerbated by a 24 hour arctic night, tha adds a disorienting sense of time to the dread that comes with the darkness, It's a landscape full of ghosts and things that go bump in the night and a worthy successor to Season One's polar opposite.
Review of Night Country: Part 1
