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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
124
Mixed:
40
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
The TimesJan 16, 2024
Season 4 Review:
The plot is unforgettable, even if the ultimate, gobsmacking denouement may test your credulity. Foster is a contained hurricane as the beady, brittle Liz Danvers, and is close to the show-stopping form she was on playing Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. She has been paired brilliantly with Kali Reis.
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The GuardianJan 16, 2024
Season 4 Review:
López has kept the off-kilter essence of the thing but made it – with the help of Foster, Reis and an array of other fine actors, including Fiona Shaw and Christopher Eccleston – its own thing. She has created a brooding, melancholy world of terrible possibilities and made True Detective not just worth watching again but more so than ever.
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Jan 16, 2024
Jan 11, 2024
Season 4 Review:
"Night Country" runs without sprinting; every episode is taut, focused and excruciatingly enthralling. The season is a tight six episodes, and no scene feels extraneous or too short. It leaves you wanting, then satisfies you with a finale that answers much but not all.
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The PlaylistJan 2, 2024
Season 4 Review:
Not quite horror, but spinetingling, not quite straightforward thriller, but still gripping, and leveraging elements of mystery and police procedural with relatably messy humans at its center, filmmaker Issa López has carefully crafted a modern-day crime classic that rivals “True Detective” season one in its addictive, enthralling qualities.
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Jan 2, 2024
Season 4 Review:
Was it worth resurrecting the long-dormant True Detective franchise — and without its original creator, Nic Pizzolatto? The new season, created, directed, and largely written by Issa López (Tigers Are Not Afraid), and starring Jodie Foster, answers with a resounding, “Hell, yes.”
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The TelegraphJan 2, 2024
Season 4 Review:
It is The Wire’s Baltimore or True Blood’s Louisiana. By episode six, a bravura, nerve-shredding conclusion that stands shoulder-square with some of the best hours of TV of recent years, the Night Country will be somewhere you’ll never want to go back to – but somewhere you’ll never forget.
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Feb 1, 2019
Season 3 Review:
The fiery and intense performances; Pizzolatto’s dense and rich writing; the finely calibrated directing from Jeremy Saulnier; the superb editing; the chilling and mournful music from the great T. Bone Burnett; the cinematography that changes hues to reflect the various time periods--all of these elements contribute to a slightly intoxicating case of Viewer Vertigo, as we try to maintain our balance while constantly being thrown OFF balance. ... This is addictive television.
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RogerEbert.comFeb 20, 2014
Season 1 Review:
HBO's program is not just an actor's showcase for two greats. It is dense, complex, rewarding storytelling, heightened by a sense of location from its writer and director that is mesmerizing and a character-driven storytelling aesthetic that brings to mind great films like David Fincher's "Zodiac" and Bong Joon-ho's "Memories of Murder."
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Jan 13, 2014
Season 1 Review:
After True Detective, all the other TV cops hunting serial killers are going to look like copycats. It’s that the taut script and spot-on dialogue takes us on a ’90s noir roller coaster ride of Shakespearean tragedy with fearless literary aspirations, delivered by two actors at the top of their game.
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Jan 10, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Very little happens in the first three hours of this anthology crime series, yet it's absolutely riveting. [20 Jan 2014]
Jan 10, 2014
Season 1 Review:
True Detective runs slow and steady without ever seeming to drag. Even minor characters get room to breathe, and seem independently alive; the briefest scenes seem to imply life beyond the frame.... The dance [Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson] do together here is work of a very high order, and all the reason you need to watch.
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Jan 9, 2014
Jan 9, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The dialogue is rich, colorful and provocative, adding to the gothic sensibilities of the series. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga makes great use of the Louisiana location, giving it as much importance to the story as the characters of Cohle and Hart. All the performances are superb, but those of McConaughey and Harrelson are in a class by themselves.
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Jan 7, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The two central performances are so powerful, the dialogue so evocative, the look so intense, that they speak to the value of the hybrid anthology format Pizzolatto is using here--which, along with FX’s “American Horror Story,” points to a potentially fascinating shift in dramatic series television.
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Jan 2, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The acting--by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson--is off the charts. The writing and the concept, by series creator and novelist Nic Pizzolatto, undulates from effectively brash soliloquies to penetratingly nuanced moments carried by sparse prose. Lastly, director Cary Joji Fukunaga has created a beautiful, sprawling sense of place (the series is shot and set in Louisiana).
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Jun 19, 2015
Season 2 Review:
There's a lot of backstory, and there's a lot of plot that makes the first couple of episodes a bit difficult to ease into, but at the end of the second episode, Pizzolato's penchant for abrupt violence with a side of freakiness will leave you with panting for more.
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LooperApr 1, 2024
Season 4 Review:
Atmospheric, intense, and driven by a ferocious desire to do something new while never letting go of what made the series work in the first place, "True Detective: Night Country" is an absolute stunner, and proof that the show's emphasis on new blood has paid off in a big way.
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Jan 12, 2024
Season 4 Review:
True Detective: Night Country is the best season of the series since the original. The horror sequences are especially good, and creator Issa López thoughtfully engages with the Alaska location without sacrificing the intrigue of a good detective story. Jodie Foster and Kali Reis make a formidable duo.
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Jan 12, 2024
Season 4 Review:
Both the roles and performances [by Jodie Foster and boxer-turned-actor Kali Reis] complement one another, giving “True Detective” two true, evenly matched co-leads for the first time since Harrelson and McConaughey. .... In redefining what the show can be, “Night Country” also invigorates the archetype by placing it in a fresh context.
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Jan 11, 2024
Season 4 Review:
The season has a forward drive that grabs you and pulls you through all kinds of heavy twists, ominous clues bordering on the supernatural, and bleak horizons, to the point where I ended up wanting more than the season’s six episodes. .... Foster is remarkable here, in ways that remind me of Kate Winslet’s turn in “Mare of Easttown.” It’s one of her most natural and charismatic performances. .... Reis is a great partner for Foster, and a revelation as an actor.
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Jan 3, 2024
Season 4 Review:
True Detective: Night Country doesn’t ever quite hit the smarmy noir notes Pizzolatto’s seasons were known for, but it’s crisp, chilling fun. Foster is fantastic, Reis a revelation, and López an auteur on the rise. It’s a dark and twisty thriller that’s perfect for these cold winter Sunday nights and even better for dissecting Monday morning with friends.
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TV Guide MagazineJan 3, 2019
Season 3 Review:
[Nic Pizzolatto] puts story and character first in this long-awaited comeback season. ... Even when the script takes heady philosophical detours into poetry and Einstein, it never loses sight of the toll of the investigation takes on those charged with solving the case. [7-20 Jan 2019, p.10]
Jan 10, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The first four episodes sent out for review become stranger and less “realistic” by the hour, not to mention more stereotypically HBO-like (artfully arranged corpses; drug-thug posturing and handgun-waving; gratuitous T&A) and less concerned with the case that Cohle and Hart are allegedly trying to solve. But the show’s time-shifting structure is so painstaking that even when True Detective spirals into lurid madness there still seems to be purpose behind it.
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TV Guide MagazineJan 10, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The crime they're investigating often takes such a back seat to the show's tricky structure and the all-pervasive angst you may once again wonder what exactly HBO has against the notion of narrative urgency. But be patient with this slow-burner of a disturbing, demanding drama. These detectives are truly fascinating.
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Jan 12, 2024
Season 4 Review:
At times there’s so much going on that the series almost loses its way — but then there’s another great jump-scare or an intricately staged set piece in the abandoned lab or beneath the ice, and we’re all in. Foster keeps peeling back layers to reveal different sides of Danvers, while relative newcomer Reis proves to be a formidable acting partner.
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IndieWireJan 8, 2024
Season 4 Review:
Season 4’s real accomplishment is in growing beyond its origins to craft a slyly subversive crime show that’s fraught, finespun, and refreshing. It helps prove that dark-and-gritty murder-mysteries don’t have to be drenched in masculinity, let alone misogyny (intentional or otherwise), to scratch the same itch for amateur sleuths at home.
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Jan 8, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The real pleasure of this series is watching them peel away the layers to this particular onion, often on long car drives across a vast, wet, undifferentiated Louisiana landscape.... The real problem with True Detective are those flash-forwards to the present day: Younger Cohle, at least, is interesting. The older version is gaseous and his maunderings often stop the show cold.
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TV Guide MagazineJan 25, 2024
Season 4 Review:
Riveting and eerie. [29 Jan - 18 Feb 2024, p.7]
Radio TimesJan 16, 2024
Season 4 Review:
True Detective: Night Country episode 1 is an excellent hour of television, giving HBO's ailing detective franchise a whole new lease of life. We can't say much about the remaining five episodes, but let us assure you that there's no dip in quality – this bold reinvention continues to stun right up until the final scene.
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Jan 12, 2024
Season 4 Review:
A fourth season of True Detective, appearing a decade after its sweaty, broody, macho debut, calls not for a return to form but for an overhaul—which is exactly what the stylish and eerie True Detective: Night Country, premiering on HBO on Sunday, succeeds at being.
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Jan 12, 2024
Season 4 Review:
This balance is tricky to strike: gesturing at your intent to forge a new direction while heavily invoking what came before you. And although the show is not quite a “return to form,” it’s a nice bit of Sunday-night programming that scratches the itch for a gripping detective story.
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Jan 12, 2024
Season 4 Review:
What López achieves is a reconfiguring of this franchise’s titular protagonist into a figure not turning its back on the void and declaring victory, but peering over the edge at an eternal miasma, with the sobering knowledge that the subterranean world is reaching ever upward to pull us back into its depths.
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Jan 12, 2024SlashfilmJan 5, 2024
Season 4 Review:
There are moments this season that choked me up emotionally in a way no previous season of "True Detective" has before, resulting in a rich, rewarding experience. If you were left disappointed by seasons 2 and 3, have faith — "True Detective" is back and better than ever.
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The TimesJan 7, 2020
Season 3 Review:
This is often a one-man show for Ali, sometimes wearing prosthetics to make him old, grey and suffering from dementia, and he is terrific in all three timelines. Great performances too from the missing children's dysfunctional, barneying parents. ... It's not yet as good as series one but there are rich, tragic seams here.
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Jan 11, 2019
Season 3 Review:
If you subscribe to the opinion that the original True Detective was terrific and the second edition, well, wasn't, the third marks a bracing case of going back to the future. That's because this latest season largely mirrors the first, unspooling a mystery across three distinct time frames while receiving an enormous star-power boost courtesy of Mahershala Ali.
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Jan 10, 2019
Season 3 Review:
It's an ambitious and imperfect work, beautiful and corny, believable and less believable by turns. I recommend it, with advisories. ... What's most compelling, and touching, in True Detective are these elements of memory and time, how it moves on and stands still. Ali, especially, with the help of some crack makeup and hair people, is persuasive as Wayne across a span of 35 years, living in the present and in an incomplete past that is running away from him even as he runs toward it.
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Jan 10, 2019
Season 3 Review:
The new season has some of this same incomprehensibility [of season 1 and 2], but a relatively small amount. Everything about it is toned down. The creepy totems left at the scene of the crime seem like a willful echo of the first season’s tangles of twigs, but without their eerie power. Ali is excellent as Hays.
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Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Season 3 Review:
Just like Nas could never make another Illmatic, Nic Pizzolatto can never make another Season 1. You only get one divinely inspired first impression. But Nas made Stillmatic and has had a long, solid career. And that's what's happening here. True Detective is pivoting to reliability. It's no longer trying to be a sensation. It's just trying to be a good show.
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Jan 12, 2024
Season 4 Review:
At the risk of making more work for already overloaded TV viewers, it’s worth noting that Night Country benefits from a second viewing, especially since the “who” in the “whodunnit” will almost certainly come as a surprise. (No spoilers, but the reveal is viscerally satisfying.)
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Jan 4, 2019
Season 3 Review:
The third season of Nick Pizzolatto’s anthology series swings back like a pendulum, losing the absurdity of the second season for an approach that’s considerably more staid. ... But season three powers through with wonderfully dense visuals, a layered story and an absolute powerhouse performance by Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali, who portrays brooding Detective Wayne Hays in three time periods.
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Jun 18, 2015
Season 2 Review:
All of the lead actors dig deeply into their roles, with Farrell playing the wary, weary burnout to perfection, and Vaughn shifting into full-throttle intensity. The story is dark and atmospheric--just the way fans like it. Meanwhile, the first three episodes hint at enough buried secrets and fresh angles to indicate that the story still has a lot to give.
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Jan 8, 2014
Season 1 Review:
At its wildest moments, the series feels as frighteningly nervy and furious in its delivery and intent as prime David Lynch. More times than not, however, it defers to an earnest, rote view of bad religion, only marginally enlivened by the appearance of Shea Whigham as a big-tent preacher.
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