‘True Detective’ Gets a Rewarding Reboot in the Eerie ‘Night Country,’ Starring Jodie Foster: TV Review
12.01.2024 - 15:21
/ variety.com
Alison Herman TV Critic Looking back, 2014 was truly a different time: Obama was in office, skinny jeans still reigned supreme and “True Detective” established itself with an unabashed emphasis on masculinity. Three years earlier, Ryan Murphy had revived the anthology series with “American Horror Story,” but it took the imprimatur of HBO, massive movie stars and a “serious” genre like crime to give the format real prestige.
In pairing Matthew McConaughey with Woody Harrelson on a journey through the bayou, creator Nic Pizzolatto elevated some of that genre’s clichés and left others intact — including a marginal presence for women, crowded into bit roles as wives and villains to make room for portentous monologues and four-minute tracking shots. The fourth season of “True Detective,” subtitled “Night Country,” is both a sharp break from the show’s past and an implicit response to its shortcomings.
After a disastrous Season 2 and an improved, if understated, Season 3, Pizzolatto has fully ceded all showrunning duties, though he retains credit as an executive producer. In his place, Mexican filmmaker Issa López takes the reins for a haunting murder mystery set in far northern Alaska.
(Director Barry Jenkins also joins the “True Detective” team via his production company Pastel.) And to share the titular role, López casts a first for the franchise: multiple female leads, in the form of living legend Jodie Foster and boxer-turned-actor Kali Reis. But “Night Country” doesn’t just tweak the “True Detective” formula in terms of gender.
The six-episode season also takes a notably different approach to the supernatural, a background motif of past installments that here becomes a central theme. Foster’s Liz Danvers is the police
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