TRUE DETECTIVE SEASON 1 is lauded as one of the best premium cable entries in television history. Season 1’s aversion to prime-time tv detective troupes and focus on the practicing of religion, nihilism, and terror, remains highly lauded. Season 2 was not as well received, for its white-collar crime plotline and lack of a central villain polarized viewers. Season 3 was a welcome return to form, yet some (including myself) believe the third entry “played it too safe.” HBO starts the new year with TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY. Its logline is – When the long winter night falls in Ennis, Alaska, the eight men who operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station vanish without a trace. To solve the case, Detectives Liz Danvers (played by two-time Oscar-winner Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) will have to confront the darkness they carry in themselves, and dig into the haunted truths that lie buried under the eternal ice.”Is NIGHT COUNTRY a mere retread of once glorious material or is it another bullseye for Home Box Office? There is so much to unpack from this 59-minute episode.
NIGHT COUNTRY opens with a quote by Hildred Castain: “For we do not know what Beast the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even God to be awake.” Hildred Castain is the main character in THE KING IN YELLOW, a collection of short stories whose motifs were prevalent in S1 of TRUE DETECTIVE. The notion of the absence of God is metaphorical and literal. Metaphorically we can expect an atmosphere of dread, terror, and hopelessness. Literally, our main plotline begins with the last day of daylight for months in Ennis, Alaska. NIGHT COUNTRY was shot in ICELAND, and the setting is haunting and immersive. The opening scene is a hunter zeroing in on a herd of elf for a kill. To the hunter’s confusion and horror, the herd collectively jumped to their deaths off a high cliff.
Three days later, eight scientists working at the Tsala Research Station vanished. The only clues are unfinished meals, wet laundry, and a woman’s severed tongue. Danvers is able to deduce the tongue belongs to a woman, due to the tongue having imprint marks indicative of women fishermen that thread their fishing equipment using their tongues. Navarro believes the victim to be Anne Kowtok, an indigenous woman who was stabbed to death with her tongue cut out after protesting the construction of a local mine. This case is a source of hostility between the two law enforcement officials. The lack of progress in the case causes Navarro to blame Danvers. Despite Danvers’s insistence that the cases are not connected, she later uncovers in a photo that a parka worn by one of the researchers was once worn by Anne.
Each season (particularly the first) of TRUE DETECTIVE has hinted at a nefarious supernatural element at play. Thus far, NIGHT COUNTRY has more than hinted at this notion. In addition to the elk incident:
- · A deceased man leads a woman named Rose Aguineua to the bodies of three of the researchers.
- · Electromagnetic and electrical phenomena happen in many instances throughout the episode.
- · A one-eyed polar bear shows up in visions and seemingly in reality to Danvers and Navarro.
- · A researcher is in an induced trance just before the mass disappearance.
The sound and visual effects of these incidents also suggest the cause could be scientific in nature. The source could be the reversing of the Earth’s magnetic field or could be due to the laborious microbial research being conducted at Tsalal.
The direction, writing, and performances are superb. Danvers is forgetful yet astute. She slightly frets over not being able to find her glasses, only to find the glasses in her inner jacket pocket. When Detective Hank (Deadwood’s John Hawkes) notes that sandwiches left on a table are fresh, Danvers correctly deduces the sandwiches only appear fresh due to the preservatives used in Alaskan foods. Navarro is passionate about her policing and serving the public but uses people for her own gains in her personal life. In her encounter with a friend with benefits; she literally hits it and quits it, while taking the man’s toothbrush for the hell of it.
The final shot of the three heads protruding through the ice is one of the most haunting in the run of TRUE DETECTIVE. Where are the other researchers? Has one or more of them gone mad and caused this? Or is something more sinister at work? Following Cary Joji Fukunaga’s standard for the first season, TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY has one director. Issa Lopez helms all six episodes and co-wrote six of them. The tone we get from the show, and the plot of it, is all from her and she commands it from the beginning.
This superb addition to one of HBO’s most heralded series returns on January 21, 2024, at 9 pm ET, and HBOWatch will be there. If you are not with us then heads will roll!
