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I really wanted to like the first season of True Detective. Released in 2014, it had so many of the things I look for: a compelling murder mystery, philosophical questions and a stellar cast with genuine chemistry. But halfway through, I lost interest. And so it was with seasons two and three – something just didn’t click. That is until season four, Night Country, which I have been racing through at an ungodly pace. This time the lead detectives are women (which probably plays no small part in my renewed enthusiasm), played by the inimitable Jodie Foster and former world champion boxer, Kali Reis.

Foster is, as you’d expect, brilliant. But it’s relative newcomer Reis who has me hooked. This season is set in Ennis, a fictional mining town in Alaska, during a polar night. The local Indigenous community, Iñupiat, (a real group of Indigenous Alaskans) have formed families and social ties with incomers over the years, but their coexistence is not without hurdles. The disappearance of a group of scientists from a local research lab brings to the fore a forgotten case of the murder of an Indigenous woman. Reis plays the Indigenous detective determined to seek justice for the forgotten victim, a local woman named Anne Kowtok.

Our reviewer, Dr Agata Lulkowska, who has made films both with and about indigenous communities in Colombia and the Peruvian Amazon, was impressed by how the show’s creators have gone........

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