True Detective Night Country

 

I saw a great many commercials for season 4 of HBO Max's True Detective Night Country.  It is Jodie Foster's first TV series in 50 years, and who wouldn't want to see Jodie Foster in a TV series?  The streaming service Max is promoting the hell out of the show, and I suspect it attracts many people to the service, like me.

Each season of True Detective has different actors and a different story.  I had seen a little of the first season with Matthew McConaughey, and it is interesting.  

The 4th season is about a police detective working in the fictional town of Enis, Alaska, 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle.  The town is enduring three months of darkness, making every scene look like it is shot a night, even though it might be day.  Six scientists disappear from a scientific research station, and they are later found naked and frozen to death.   The detective treats this as a murder investigation, and she resists her superiors trying to take the case away from her.

Like many shows today, it is female-centric, reminiscent of Fargo or The Silence of the Lambs.  

Jodie Foster gives an interesting performance, but described her police detective character as, "Awful. An Alaskan Karen".  The character is rude to just about everyone and has been sleeping with some townsfolk.  She was transferred to Enis because nobody wanted to work with her.  She has a mutual hatred with another policewoman, played by Kari Reis, over some mysterious past incident.  Predictably, the case will allow the pair to resolve their differences and become friends.

The 4th season has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes but only a 56% audience score.  I binge-watched the season and found it slow, boring, and a mess.  It tries to do too much, with too many characters, and drags out too long.  It is not only a police procedural drama, but it has a bit of horror and science fiction thrown in.  People have visions of dead people, which drive a couple of them to suicide, but they might just be going crazy from the long darkness.  

The first couple of episodes set an eerie mood, but so little happens that I was questioning why anyone would want to watch the show.

I have great respect for Christopher Eccleston and Fiona Shaw, but they are underutilized here.  Eccleston only serves the purpose of being an asshole, sporting a fake American accent, and having a nude love-making scene with Foster.  The actor deserves better.  

Foster almost looks like an old woman and Eccleston is also looking older.  He has lost some of the charm he had as a younger actor.

The actress Kali Reis is a former professional boxer, and I kept thinking she looked like Samira Wiley from The Handmaid's Tale.

The ending tries to make a political point about pollution, but I didn't find it convincing.  There are a few things in the series that are not logical or believable.

There is much nudity, profanity, and some gore.  If the series were a movie, it would be rated a hard R.

Rating:  C+.