'True Detective: polar night', coldly inaugurating the supernatural arctic 'noir'

The appearance of

True Detective

(HBO) in 2014, with its rescue of two classic actors who had been slightly forgotten - or relegated to romantic comedy, or a cinema that had stopped imposing challenges on them - such as Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, its overwhelming construction of characters, detectives with more nuances and chiaroscuros than ever, and a break with the classic scheme of

noir

- the game with the timeline that kept the viewer lost -, not to mention the fantastic, or mystical, component, it represented a before and after. a later in the way of conceiving crime fiction on television.

Without going into how it carried the ink when it comes to toxic masculinity, the series sublimated the possibilities of the genre, turning each season into a multifaceted story in which the sordid shook hands with the everyday and, at the same time, the past and present of the community—the space, the very important setting—in which the crime occurred, or had occurred in that, at times, ghostly or foggy other time.

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A new case with Jodie Foster at the end of the world: Mexican Issa López takes on the challenge of 'True Detective'

Its author, Nic Pizzolatto, who was first a writer—and a university professor of creative writing—before being

a showrunner

, ended up, somehow, engulfed by the phenomenon.

As if the edifice constructed in that first season had drained its well of narrative wisdom—a well brilliantly directed by Cary Fukunaga

(No Time to Die)

—it happened that there was no other season to match.

Although the elements that were intended to give it continuity - such as the importance of the setting, which in the second was California, and the inhospitableness of the urban area, and in the third, the Ozarks - were still there, the attempt to recharge was failed. the formula, since the recipe of the first season should not and could not be recharged by veering in another direction but, as Noah Hawley has done very well with

Fargo

, by delving into it.

And while the one starring Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn – the second – tries and almost succeeds, the third goes so far away that it is completely unrecognizable.

That there is a year between the first and second seasons (which premiered in 2015) and four between the second and third (which premiered in 2019), gives an idea of ​​what was happening inside.

That is to say, something had not worked and perhaps it was not worth continuing to try to exploit the format.

That the fourth season arrives now, five years later, and does not have Pizzolatto at the controls - who admitted, at the end of the third, to have a "very good" idea for the fourth, an idea that was discarded - also has to do with the sense of sinking that the series carried, from such an overwhelming beginning.

The problem is not that Pizzolatto and Fukunaga were so on target at first that things were insurmountable.

The problem is that the decisions made after that were not ambitious enough.

Is it the decision of Issa López, the new

showrunner

of

True Detective

, to create a reverse of the first?

Yes, as long as it is considered a new, yet cold, beginning.

Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, stars of 'True Detective.

polar night' at the premiere of the series in Los Angeles.Sipa USA (Sthanlee Mirador/Sipa USA / Cordon Press)

For López, a Mexican writer and filmmaker—who counts among her fans Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro, who were enthusiastic about her film

Vuelven

—the ideal was to return to the starting point, and turn it around.

Where there was excess masculinity, place strong women—two detectives, Liz Danvers (one, here, endearing Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis)—and change dusty, hot Louisiana for frozen Alaska, and cosmic horror. and Victorian, Lovecraftian, by Robert W. Chambers—the author of

The Yellow King

, one of the references of the first season—for a science fiction that is not afraid of the supernatural, and that invokes, without complexes,

The Thing

, by John Carpenter from, almost, the first image.

The result is, without a doubt, something new, and should be judged as such, since trying to find some kind of similarity with the first installment, a line of continuity that does not go through the header - which, for the first time, has a title added,

Polar Night

—, it is impossible.

Thus, from

the

beginning, this new

True Detective

is much more reminiscent of a

serious

episode

of

The

Yes, López mentions Ridley Scott's

Nostromo

, and the Overlook Hotel, from Stanley Kubrick's

The Shining

, as main references, in addition to

The Thing

, as well as

True Detective

.

And it doesn't matter in the slightest because it inaugurates, in its own way, an arctic

noir

in which, yes, there are two timelines again — an activist died six years ago, and her language is the only thing found on the suddenly uninhabited base —, and two types of agents in command — Agent Navarro, very tough, with her spectacular

cheek

piercings

, and her tattoos, and her Napoleonic and solitary attitude, is a state agent, and she is above Danvers, the troubled mother of a somewhat wayward, weak and cerebral teenager—and a layered crime of seemingly impossible resolution.

The setting is top ten —in fact, it is the main value of the season: the viewer has to be willing to be cold

before the screen, in the lost Ennis, sort of

Twin Peaks

at the end of the world—, and the way in which I miss it—there are ghosts, yes, and in some way they communicate with the neighbors—takes over the plot, It is frankly daring, coming from where it comes from.

Which means that López is imposing his mark, and that is always good.

The series is more willing than ever to denounce social differences and is also attentive to diversity.

That the victims are not only men, but nothing related to the hackneyed underworld—they are scientists and activists, not prostitutes.

nor prostitutes—also adds a point, or many, in favor of the new

True Detective

which, however, has the drawback that comes from excessive concern for the plot: the coldness—this time, narrative—that prevents the characters from inhabiting , engine of all self-respecting criminal fiction.

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