Stream It Or Skip It: ‘True Detective: Night Country’ On HBO Max, Where Jodie Foster Is An Alaskan Police Chief Investigating The Disappearance Of A Group Of Scientists

It’s been five years since Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO crime anthology series True Detective graced our screens, and it’s back in a big way. It’s got two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster as its lead, the constant darkness of the Alaskan winter as its backdrop and a new creator and showrunner. But does the series feel like part of the True Detective franchise?

TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A snowy landscape. “Alaska, 150 Miles North Of The Arctic Circle. December 17. The Last Sunset Of The Year.” A hunter spies a herd of caribou and carefully takes his rifle out and aims. But then the herd gets spooked, runs, and they leap into some sort of chasm.

The Gist: We see the team of researchers at the Tsalal Arctic Research Station, doing what they do. Suddenly, one of the researchers starts shaking violently and says, “She’s awake.” Three days later, a truck pulls in for a supply delivery. The delivery person can’t find anyone there, but whatever happened, the researchers left in a hurry. Then he goes to pick up his keys and sees a severed tongue on the floor.

Coming in to investigate is Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), the police chief in the nearby town of Ennis, along with her deputies, Hank Prior (John Hawkes) and his son Peter (Finn Bennett). It’s pretty obvious from their banter that Liz and Hank are not buddies, and they have different investigative styles. Danvers is pretty sure that the researchers left suddenly and they haven’t been there for at least 48 hours; the words “WE ARE ALL DEAD” scrawled on a whiteboard is also a pretty good indicator that something is wrong. She also recognizes the marks on the severed tongue; they’re likely from an Indigenous woman who would lick thread when fixing fishing nets.

When Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), a state trooper who used to work under Danvers on the Ennis police, gets word about the tongue, and makes a beeline to the Ennis police station, insisting that the tongue belongs to Annie Kowtok, an Indigenous activist that was brutally murdered six years prior. Annie’s body was found missing her tongue. Navarro became so obsessed with solving the case that she started questioning some influential people in the area, leading to Danvers taking her off the case and transferring her to the state troopers squad.

Danvers insists that it’s not the same tongue, but she has Peter pull Kowtok’s file, just in case there’s a connection. That’s not an easy task, because Hank took the files to his house when there was a flood a couple of years back, so Peter has to sneak around his childhood bedroom, where the files are, to get the files on the sly. Once she does get those files, she starts seeing connections, albeit tiny ones, between Kowtok’s murder and the disappearance of the researchers.

Both Danvers and Navarro have other things that they have to deal with. Danvers’ stepdaughter Leah (Isabella Star LaBlanc) was caught filming intimate videos with a 16-year-old friend. On their way back from that incident, they almost get hit by a hysterical drunk driver, which triggers Danvers; Leah’s father was killed in a drunk driving accident. Navarro’s sister Julia (Aka Niviâna) is dealing with some severe mental health issues, but doesn’t want to be hospitalized for them.

In the meantime, Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw), who lives near the research station, has been seeing visions of loved ones who have long ago passed. One of them points her in the direction of a gruesome scene.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? True Detective: Night Country is somewhat reminiscent of the first season of True Detective, which famously starred Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey (both of whom, along with Foster and original series creator Nic Pizzolatto, are EPs this season). There is definitely the same supernatural elements and a similar sense of humor, but we’ll explain below why the similarities end there.

Our Take: For the last few weeks, True Detective: Night Country has been lauded as a “return to form” for the True Detective brand, whose last season was five years ago. But what Issa López, who created, wrote and directed Night Country, has done is more distinctive than that.

What Pizzolatto did in the first season of True Detective was wrap an early ’90s story around the 2014 testimony of McConaughey’s character Rust Cohle, to memorable effect (the whole “time is a flat circle” thing). Without the rantings of 2014 Cohle, the ’90s flashback story would have felt like a pretty standard mystery.

López, on the other hand, is taking a more straightforward mystery narrative and taking pains to show the relevancy to the mystery of the personal lives of those investigating it. Think of it as less True Detective Season 1 and more Mare Of Easttown, but taking place in the snowy darkness of an Alaskan winter.

Of course, it helps to have Jodie Foster playing your leading character. Even in small moments, like when she’s chiding Hank about how he raised Peter, or when she’s dismissive of Navarro, there’s a level of comfort that she has with her character that comes through in her usual naturalistic performance. In the first episode, the two-time Oscar winner isn’t given big dramatic moments to dig into, but the completeness of how she embodies Danvers will pay off when those big moments come.

Reis is also excellent, because she portrays Navarro’s intensity so well, and she holds her own in her scenes with Foster. The two are going to be in a lot of scenes together, so it’s good to see the chemistry between the two established right away.

The entire supernatural element of the story, and the idea that there might be a conflict between Danvers and Navarro over the influence of beyond-earthly factors in the case, is going to drive a lot of this. What we hope is that the ending is more believable than the one we saw during the first season of True Detective.

Sex and Skin: Navarro takes a break in the middle of her shift to go see her “friend with benefits” Eddie Qavvik (Joel Montgrand) for a pretty intense quickie. She seems to be satisfied that he finished, but she didn’t seem to have an orgasm herself. Might be some insight into her personality.

Parting Shot: Danvers, Navarro and Danvers’ crew sees the gruesome scene that Rose found: Three of the researchers, mid-scream, frozen and buried in the ice.

Sleeper Star: Christopher Eccleston’s character Ted Corsaro did not appear in the first episode, but we’re looking forward to seeing Eccleston and Foster share scenes together.

Most Pilot-y Line: While Danvers tells Peter that “Ennis, this fucking town, killed Annie, she gets buzzed about her fantasy football team. She seems just as angry that she has no idea who she’ll play that weekend than she is about the case.

Our Call: STREAM IT. True Detective: Night Country is just as creepy as the show’s previous seasons, but relies on a good story and fine performances to carry the season and keep viewers engaged.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.