Boxing Clever: True Detective - Night Country
Every week, Michael Telfer – aka Mike TV – recommends a box set to crack open. This week, he's looking back at 2024's creepy - and chilly - return to form for True Detective
Released at the beginning of 2024, Night Country is the fourth season of True Detective, with each telling a separate, self-contained and usually disturbing story.
The enduring success and popularity of the series is largely down to two things; the consistently high quality of the casting and the spectacular virtuosity of the first series, which saw Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson investigating a gruesome set of murders in the blistering heat of Louisiana.
Seasons two and three featured new detectives played by Vince Vaughn and Colin Farrell, and Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff respectively, but in the eyes of most critics and viewers they failed to hit the same levels of intensity and intrigue as the original.
The most recent season sees Jodie Foster as police chief Danvers reluctantly teaming up with newcomer Kali Reis’ Detective Navarro to determine what happened to a team of scientists who came to a grisly (and chilly) end on the Alaskan ice, apparently dying of either exposure or terror.
We quickly learn that the mystery has a number of similarities with a cold (or colder at least) case that the pair worked together on six years previously, which did not end well. Foster is brilliant as the exasperating and unrelenting Chief Danvers, whose singleminded and dogged approach has taken a heavy toll on both her career and her family life.
Her partnership with Navarro, a member of the indigenous Inupiaq community in the fictional town of Ennis, is very well constructed and the pair are eminently watchable as they bicker and rub each other up the wrong way.
Earlier seasons hinted at unearthly forces driving the various macabre crimes, but Night Country is far more explicit that something paranormal or otherworldly is taking place in the 24 hour darkness of the Alaskan winter, where reality and sanity are both stretched to breaking.
British actors Fiona Shaw and Christopher Eccleston feature with passable American accents, Shaw as a mysterious recluse who can see dead spirits and Eccleston as Danvers’ long-suffering boss and on-off fling.
Night Country marked a cast iron return to form for the True Detective franchise and its success was quickly followed by a confirmation that there would be a season five.
In line with previous seasons, they’re taking their time and little is known about the next instalment - aside from that it will be set in New York and will be presided over by Night Country showrunner, Issa Lopez.
In the meantime, Night Country is available to watch on Now TV.