True Detective: Night Country

True Detective is a strange beast, and from the most ardent fans to the most outspoken critics, it's relatively easy to meet in the middle and agree that the series has had triumphant highs and disappointing lows. The first season is widely regarded as one of the best in recent memory, and likewise, the follow-up second season was a fall from grace of such magnitude that the outcry killed all momentum and left us without a third season for four years. Well, it turned out to be another five years between the third and this now fourth season, and quite significant changes to several key creative heads too, but now all six episodes have been completed and we can now place the fourth season in the multifaceted ranking.

Most critically, Nic Pizzolatto, who at one point was directly involved in the development of the fourth season, was dropped in favour of Issa López. That in itself hasn't gone down well with some fans, and furthermore, Pizzolatto has had nothing but contempt for López's work, so the question is: Is he on to something?

In a nutshell? No, he's not, because apart from a few structural missteps here and there, as well as a far more generic and boring opening vignette, which is otherwise one of the show's absolute trademarks, this is a solid, well-constructed and worthy season of True Detective, which may not reach the wild heights of the first season, but which really places itself in the slipstream.

First and foremost, it's set in cold, remote Alaska, which undergoes a period of 30-odd days of continuous darkness, where heavy industry provides vital jobs but also poisons the water that residents here on the edge of established civilisation drink. It is in Ennis - a toxic, hateful and complicated place - that we find our protagonists: the steadfast, principled and equally complicated Liz Danvers, played by Jodie Foster, and Kali Reis' Evangeline Navarro. Together, they mirror the legendary duo played by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in the first season, two relatively competent police officers who, through a pivotal murder, are put on a case that quickly becomes bigger than Ennis. It's not a rethink of the formula by any means, but in terms of holding the viewer's attention and generating debate over the course of the six episodes, this is solid television all the way through.

I'll try to keep actual spoilers to a minimum, but let's just say that True Detective: Night Country manages to introduce a few well-executed supernatural elements here and there with relative grace, always staying on the subtle side. And the series never rushes to answer the key questions that both they and the viewers are left with, building suspense, an aspect that not all thriller series manage to achieve.

This is helped by strong performances across the board, although Foster's character in particular has to spend time proving that she is more than a caricature, and she really is. Set design, song selections and atmosphere follow suit, and it's really only the occasional poor CG animation that really disappoints.

There are small glitches here and there. Overall, six episodes is a little too little to address all the intriguing threads that are being spread out around the viewer, and therefore the final solution seems rather narrow when the problems that have set up are the exact opposite. Night Country could have easily filled two more episodes and felt more narratively robust as a result. In addition, it's worth noting that the opening, or "vignette" as it's called, is weak this time around, with a poor sound mix and a less cohesive visual identity that has historically always kicked off True Detective with a bang.

At the end of the day, Issa López is a worthy successor, and Pizzolatto can sit down again, because this seems closer to the first season than he himself has come to date.