Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Jodie Foster, Kali Reis, Fiona Shaw, Finn Bennett, Isabella Star LaBlanc, Christopher Eccleston, John Hawkins, Dervla Kirwan, Anna Lambe, L’xeis Diane Benson, Aka Niviâna, Joel D. Montgrand, Owen McDonnell, Erling Eliasson.

Although it is unwritten, a good detective will know instinctively when the need to turn away from the letter of the law is good for the community, when the reveal of the truth will play into the hands of those with evil intent and not the victims who suffered under the yoke of oppression, be it corporate or personal.

True Detective’s fourth season, Night Country, gives that offering of inverted justice a prominent spotlight as it frames the fight and struggle of the Native American community caught up in the terms of progress and capitalist as they face once more being shunted aside and their traditions ignored on the land they call home.

It is against this backdrop of distrust and murder, of the poisoning of the land, that the appearance of one of cinema’s all-time greats in Jodie Foster escalates the feeling of importance that the six-part series aims, and concludes to ask the question of empathy as the strange case of the frozen and dead scientists at the local facility is investigated and whether truth, the pursuit of resolution, is enough to convict those initially wronged.

By placing the tale within the confines of the often-terrifying thought of continued and endless night, the narrative takes on a horror like stance, it is to the viewer of what they see hiding in the corners, the possibility of the lack of control, the imagination running wild with possibilities and the thread of creatures that hunt humans in the dark. It is a nerve-racking experience, one many would refuse to acknowledge such a way of life could be endured, but when it comes to murder all environments are equal in the face of death, only the retribution can change.

Jodie Foster, Chris Eccleston, Kali Reis, and Fiona Shaw deliver a masterclass of performance in the shadow of the night, one that sits within the framework of the entire arc of the series with stamina and fortitude. They capture the desperation, the anguish of the cold and the continued sense of survival in some of the harshest conditions known to humanity with a patience that would test the ability of a whole section of the acting fraternity.

It is to that the series is to be lauded and admired, the True Detective in pursuit of a truth in the dark.

Ian D. Hall