True Detective truly is, unlike the show’s endless parade of cadavers, impossible to kill. I had assumed HBO’s troubled anthology series was done for after its seriously disappointing second and third outings. But here it is back on our screens five years later in the form of True Detective: Night Country.
What is surprising about True Detective’s return is how much goodwill there seemed to be around the project, given the general dissipation of interest following the show’s drop-off in its last two outings. Much of this goodwill was directed at tweaks that had been made to a staid formula: much criticised series creator Nic Pizzolatto was out, replaced as showrunner by Mexican director Issa López; and a show that previously seemed to have little interest in female characters would now be led by two of them: a pair of fractious Alaska police officers played by Kali Reis and – in a real casting coup – Jodie Foster.
