'True Detective: Night Country' review: There's just too much going on

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Just as a long winter's night descends on Ennis, a remote Alaska town above the Arctic Circle, eight men from a research station on the tundra go missing. Ennis chief of police Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and her protégé, a young officer named Peter Prior (Finn Bennett) head out to the crime scene, then are soon directed to another — the intertwined bodies of seven of the researchers, frozen solid, or “corpsicles,” per Danvers. Her former partner, Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) wants in on the case, but she and Danvers have bad blood over an earlier investigation.

This six-part fourth-season installment of “True Detective” was filmed entirely in Iceland (and at night). Plus, this note about Reis, of American Indian descent and a relative newcomer to acting — she's a former world boxing champion, and held the female light welterweight title as recently as 2022.

MY SAY Over the better part of a decade, HBO tried to crack the original “True Detective” code, but after an excruciating second season, then comatose third, was finally forced to concede the obvious: What code? For the first season (which arrived Jan. 12, 2014), creator Nic Pizzolatto borrowed elements from writers H.P. Lovecraft, Robert W. Chambers and Thomas Ligotti, then dared viewers to piece them all together. Both Easter egg hunt, and “Jeopardy!” cult horror category, “TD” seemed so sinister, mysterious and deep — until that mic drop of a finale which essentially just reheated “The Silence of the Lambs.”

For this fourth season, Pizzolatto (who remains an executive producer) has been replaced by Issa López, a Mexican national and U.S. TV novice who created some highly regarded Spanish-language features, notably 2017's “Tigers Are Not Afraid.” HBO — in other words — has gone about as far in the opposite direction as it possibly can. López makes certain not to reverse course.

With a nod to the original that could be interpreted as either homage or sendup, she begins her own season with a title card lifted from Chambers that reads “we do not know what beasts the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even God to be awake.” That's about the only time you'll need Google to figure out some obscure literary reference. Unlike her predecessor, López is not big on Easter eggs, or cult horror, but she does love corpsicles, head fakes, red herrings, and lots (and lots) of discursive storylines. Her corpsicle obsession is best. Over several episodes, their frozen bodies are all tangled up in a Gordian knot and left to thaw in the local hockey rink. A hand breaks off one body, which then emits a howl. The scene is horrifying but also funny, and perhaps is meant to be, because also unlike Pizzolatto, López does have a puckish sense of humor.

Otherwise, she and her A-list lead are all business. They have urgent themes here, notably the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women, and they mean to tackle them all. Mixed in with a potluck genre mashup of noir detective, horror and magic realism are side stories about cultural appropriation, environmental desecration and toxic male behavior. Danvers and her sort-of partner, Navarro, have their own toxic issues, most related to family dynamics, and they always have to work through those first before getting back to those mysterious corpsicles in the rink.

 It's a lot, sometimes too much, when in fact this “TD” works best with just one story. After that, settle in for a dark night whose hours grow too long.

BOTTOM LINE Too much going on, but still an improvement over seasons two and three.