Full disclosure: I have never been a fan of True Detective, even in its first and, by wide consensus, best instalment. It was so very full of Acting-with-a-capital-A and Directing-with-a-capital-D. When the two subsequent iterations of the anthology series became overwhelmed by the self-indulgences that had always threatened, I took my leave, along with many other viewers.
Now it is back for a fourth season – True Detective: Night Country. It is the first outing without its creator, Nic Pizzolatto, as either showrunner or writer (though he remains as executive producer). There has been radical change: a brutal, beautiful stripping-back by the new writer and director, Issa López. Instead of the broiling sun under which previous detectives, criminals and victims laboured we are now in the fictional mining town of Ennis, Alaska just as day turns into 60 days of night. Malevolence is replaced by stark, spare horror as the new mystery unfolds. It involves the disappearance of all the scientists from the nearby research station, leaving no clues behind but a severed tongue and the words “We are all dead” scribbled on a whiteboard, a possible link to a previous unsolved murder of a native Iñupiat woman, and anti-mine activist, Annie.
