True Detective: Night Country

By Joanna Langfield

Get out that big warm quilt. You’re going to need it, when you cozy up on the couch for this icily terrific re-imagining of the long running series.

Director/writer Issa Lopez has sprung this super and supernatural spin from the roots of the earlier True Detective seasons. But this one feels as fresh and as sharp as an ice pick. And almost as lethal.

Jodie Foster and Kali Reis star as the police chief and her former investigative partner, living in an Alaskan town we are told is “the end of the world’. It sure feels that way. Because, just as the sun sets for days on end, leaving us all literally in the dark, something very strange and very scary is discovered out on the ice. And it just may have something to do with another unsolved case, one that has haunted the two women for years. But that’s not all that creeps into their dreams. These officers have issues of their own. And, as unthinkable as those stories are, these women can’t stop being possessed by them.

An all round great cast includes the always dandy John Hawkes and Fiona Shaw. Finn Bennett rises to the occasion with aplomb but it is Kali Reis who is the biggest surprise, at least to me. The latest in an impressive list of wrestlers who have taken to the acting ring, Reis brings an assured dignity that fascinates.

And then there’s Jodie Foster. In the past year, Foster has delivered two absolutely great performances. One as Bonnie Stoll, Diana Nyad’s coach in Nyad and now here as Liz Danvers, the brittle Chief whose way of finding life is probing death. There was never a question about Foster’s talent or integrity. And she’s maintained all that. But what I love now is that she is willing to play the tough, the unglamorous, the real. And we are all the better for that.