All 4 seasons of True Detective, ranked from worst to best

3. True Detective: Night Country (season 4)

I'll say at the outset that Night Country is not a perfect season of television. It's a good deal schlockier than previous season of True Detective. Instead of haunted gumshoes trying to get to the bottom of one murder, Night Country opens with a whole group of scientists found dead in the snow, their faces frozen in horror. While the first season of the series gently hinted at possible supernatural agents lurking behind the veil, in Night Country, naked corpse ghosts show up in the background to point their fingers menacingly at our protagonists. It feels way more like a traditional horror movie than before. And then there are all those musical montages set to low-fi pop songs, a mildly cringey touch unthinkable in earlier seasons.

But that doesn't mean it isn't a fun watch. The strength of Night Country is its characters, many of whom are more fleshed out and likable than before. There's Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), the hard-as-nails police chief who's slept with half the husbands in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska. Her employees live in fear of her but she still has to call in someone tall to help her reach the top shelf. There's Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), the grizzled state trooped struggling with mental health issues. My personal favorite character was Peter Prior (Finn Bennett), a young officer whose innocence provides some needed contrast with all the hard-boiled energy coming from Danvers and Navarro. We spend more time than before hanging out with these characters when they're not on duty, and I came to like them in the end.

Night Country also has a strong ending, where we find out that the mystery didn't have a supernatural solotion after here, despite more than a few heavy-handed hints. Overall, Night Country isn't as tight as previous seasons of True Detective. It's a bit brighter, a bit funnier, and even a bit cheesier. But I had fun watching it, the performances are as strong as ever, and I'd be happy to watch more of the show in this mode, if HBO wants to make it. After three seasons of deep dark foreboding depths, Night Country came as a nice change of pace.

And speaking of deep dark foreboding depths: