True Detective

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.

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.

Confidently helmed, stunningly shot and richly performed, it is spellbinding, bone-chilling and does just about the last thing you’d expect from True Detective four series in: it makes you want more.

This is certainly not the first mystery story in which corporate interests — the local mine — are set against the needs of the people. (See: “Dark Winds.”) It has political resonance, but it’s also the most commonplace element in a largely extraordinary series.

The excellent 6-episode “True Detective: Night Country.” A mesmerizing study of murder, misogyny, racism, cycles of abuse, and possibly something out of H.P. Lovecraft, “Night Country” will rattle you.

"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.

A return to form for “True Detective” in a season that’s as bold and original as the first one with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey.

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.

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.”

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.

While it doesn’t dance about in time quite like Season 1, Night Country still hums with that sense of the terrifyingly possible — as seen through the eyes of two cops who’ve seen the worst of humanity, sometimes in the mirror.

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.

By grounding her supernatural whodunnit in more intimate, interpersonal dramas, López transforms “True Detective” from a lot of mystical mumbling into a show with something to say.

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.

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.

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.

Your next crime fiction obsession arrives with the fourth season of HBO’s True Detective,” this time subtitled “Night Country” (9 p.m. Jan. 14). It’s far superior to the show’s disappointing second season.

What it lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in quality, with a number of outstanding performances led by Jodie Foster’s Liz Danvers, the police chief of the remote town of Ennis, Alaska.

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.

True Detective: Night Country will keep you held fast in its grip right up until the ultimate black of the end credits.

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.

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.

The result is an engrossing mystery story that makes me hope we haven’t seen the last of this oddball police procedural.

Riveting and eerie. [29 Jan - 18 Feb 2024, p.7]

Night Country takes the middle of nowhere as a jumping off point for a descent – into madness, violence, and the loss of faith. At its best and bleakest, the series reflects a true dark night of the soul.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Prepare to be wowed by season 4 of the crime series when Jodie Foster and Kali Reis take charge as Alaska cops mushing through polar winter to catch a killer. The darkness can be dreary, but the shivery suspense fueled by untamed female energy will rock your world.

The best it’s been since the triumphant first season, True Detective: Night Country is a thickly atmospheric, shiveringly sinister mystery.

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.

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.)

"True Detective: Night Country" is best taken as a small town story, which uses a crime to peel back the region's layers of humanity, nature and corruption, to expose the depth of the darkness within.

True Detective boldly hits the reset button in Season 4, but runs into the same problems that plagued previous seasons.

Like the best seasons of True Detective, Night Country thrives on its ability to exist as both a brisk, thrilling genre piece and a weighty, philosophical drama.

It's the rare miniseries that feels an episode or two too short rather than a story padded out to fill a season. Still, it's a memorable six episodes that offer a trip to a desolate place most of us will never visit and the perils unique to it.

While not without its flaws, López’s gorgeously realized story grounds its hardboiled mystery in multidimensional characters, believably immerses viewers in a unique community, and makes a strong case for the continuation of the franchise.

For a tale set in such a stark location, Night Country is awfully busy, teeming with narrative complication and colorful characters. Text doesn’t always match up with place. But in that way, Night Country is also doing an interesting job of subverting expectations.

Whether you deem Night Country a successful reboot of a spiralling franchise will depend on your interest in spirituality (never too far from the True Detective hinterland, but the supernatural is more explicit here) and how forgiving you are in the face of subpar special effects.

Ultimately, though, “True Detective: Night Country” plays like a slog through deep snow before getting around to unlocking its secrets, a too-long journey into night.

I finished “True Detective: Night Country” feeling frustrated as well as moved. This was a season with good bones (pun intended) that needed more than six episodes to breathe. Absent that space, it leans on so much shorthand that the setup starts to feel hand-wavy and a little, well, generic.

Trying to bite off more than it can chew to the detriment of its own strengths, this multifaceted descent into a chilly abyss doesn’t completely come together.

A female-forward story that personalizes and internalizes the anthology’s typically convoluted plotting in a way that’s refreshing and frequently potent. But as the first True Detective season not to tell its story over eight episodes, Night Country comes off as needlessly truncated in key areas, lacking the opportunity to truly inhabit its most distinctive elements.

There’s a compelling story buried in here, about the town’s indigenous Iñupiaq women, and how and why they operate on the margins. “True Detective” mostly keeps them on the edges of the story, as well. The finale suggests a more interesting story that could have been front and center.

Too much going on, but still an improvement over seasons two and three.