"When we all fall asleep, where do we go?"
That lyric, hauntingly sung by Billie Eilish, kicks off all six episodes of "True Detective: Night Country," starting Jan. 14 on HBO and Max. And each time, you'll be drawn under the spell cast by season 4 of the crime anthology series that began in 2014 starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as Louisiana cops coping with homicide and their own toxic masculinity.
No one much remembers the next two seasons. That won't be the case in this stunning return to form, with series creator Nic Pizzolatto turning over the reins to Mexico's Issa López ("Tigers Are Not Afraid") and two dynamite women, double Oscar winner Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, a champion boxer turned knockout actor. Prepare to be wowed by all the untamed female energy.
"Light's winning," claimed McConaughey in the oddly hopeful last line from season 1. Not this time. Though filmed in Iceland, the setting is Alaska in polar winter, when the remote town of Ennis is plunged into darkness for two months. Santa time has never looked as bleak or felt as bone-chilling, despite the festive lights decorating the town.
A killer-good Foster enters in a whoosh of acid wit and bad attitude as Liz Danvers, Ennis' new chief of police. She's been assigned to this nowhereville as punishment for not following the rules set down by a cop boss (Christopher Eccleston) she's having sex with on the side.
MORE: 'Cry Macho' review: Clint Eastwood is a classic in every sense of the wordDanvers, a widow who's dragged herself to Ennis with her peeved stepdaughter Leah (Isabella Star LeBlanc), particularly resents being partnered again with Reis' character Evangeline Navarro, an Alaska Native who's been demoted to state trooper for the part she and Danvers allegedly played in avenging the stabbing death of Iñupiaq environmental activist and midwife Annie K.
Got that? No worries. A creepy clarity will emerge as Danvers and Navarro (no one calls them by their first names) join forces on the bizarro case of eight missing scientists from an Arctic research center. All but one of them show up crammed together naked and frozen in the ice -- their faces contorted in terror in a tableau one quipster calls a "corpsicle."
While the corpsicle thaws and Annie K's severed tongue is mysteriously found at the center, Danvers calls her team into action. Finn Bennett is outstanding as Peter Prior, her young cop protege. His cop father, Hank (a secretive, sardonic John Hawkes), wrongly accuses Danvers of playing Mrs. Robinson to his married son. In fact, she treats him like the child she lost.
Tenderness is hard to find in Ennis. It's sex that attracts Navarro to local musher Eddie Qavvik (Joel D. Montgrand), whose true affections she keeps resisting. Having already lost her sister to suicide, Navarro, like Danvers, is slow to reciprocate a deeper love.
Ghosts play a major role in resolving conflicts among the living in "Night Country," a reference to the mythic caves that lie beneath the ice. As showrunner, Lopez invests these Native beliefs with her own Mexican culture about Día de Muertos, a day when those who are gone can cross a bridge back to life, not to instill fear but to provide guidance, just like Danvers' spiritual friend Rose Aguineau (the great Fiona Shaw) receives from her late partner.
MORE: Review: 'The Tender Bar' deals a winning handAt the nerve-frying climax, set in night country, Danvers and Navarro are trapped in a confined space and tortured by demons real and imaginary. It could be corporate villains, such as the local mining company which is polluting the water supply. Or it could be existential evil, the kind that never dies, the kind that justifies murder in the name of a vague greater good.
"Night Country" has its rough patches. The darkness can be too dreary, the pacing too plodding, the characters too numerous to resonate. But at its best, lifted by shivery suspense and the electrifying teamwork of Foster and Reis, the series will dig in and rock your world.
