Michele K. Short/HBO
When the first season of Nic Pizzolatto’s crime anthology series True Detective premiered in 2014, the semi-surreal procedural immediately drew comparisons to David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks for its brazenly auteurist sensibilities. Strange things go bump in the night, bodies are found alongside mysterious paraphernalia, and the low hum of a vague spirituality keeps everyone related to the murders on edge at all times. But the following two seasons of True Detective were less successful in drawing such an immense comparison to one of the most revered crime shows—and television shows, period—of all time. They lacked the eccentricity and the singular, eerie oddness of the first season.
Happily, that’s very much not the case in the highly anticipated fourth season, True Detective: Night Country, something you’ll know very well if you watched this week’s premiere. After a lengthy, six-year hiatus, the series is back and more bizarre than ever. And, much like another prestige mystery that aired after an extended break (cough, Twin Peaks: The Return, cough), there’s a unique air of humor to all of this darkness.
The first episode of Season 4 brings us back into small-town life, this time in the fictional Ennis, Alaska, where local detective Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and her misfit police cohorts are sent to investigate the disappearance of eight men at a nearby research station. Puzzled by what she finds, Liz brings in her old colleague (and foil), fellow detective Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), who suspects there’s more to the case. Those suspicions are quickly confirmed by a series of haunting scenes throughout the episode, making the desolate darkness of the Alaskan tundra feel inescapably cold, but certainly not icy enough to deter our intrigue over what the hell just happened.