Hey remember True Detective? Remember how it was the best show on TV and then immediately the worst show on TV? Or, at least the most disappointing show on TV? Few series have had such a sharp freshman to sophomore season quality drop as True Detective. Quality-wise, it rebounded with season three, starring Mahershala Ali, but True Detective hasn’t been a force in pop culture since that first season. Well, maybe Jodie Foster can fix that!
Foster will star in a fourth season of True Detective, currently titled True Detective: Night Country. She will play Liz Danvers, an Alaskan detective investigating the disappearance of a team of scientists from a remote research facility. Yesssss, give me those horror vibes, that monster mystery, that X-Files feeling. It doesn’t actually have to be a paranormal mystery, but that tone could be an interesting way to more or less reboot True Detective. Sort of like Fortitude, an Arctic-set mystery/thriller series starring Stanley Tucci, it has the trappings of a monster mystery, but it’s just a really solid detective story (at least in the first season). There will be another lady detective featured, Evangeline Navarro, but the role has not yet been cast.
True Detective is also getting a makeover behind the camera. Mexican filmmaker Issa Lopez, who made the most excellent film Tigers Are Not Afraid, is co-writing the series and will direct several episodes, including the pilot. Barry Jenkins is stepping up to produce, along with his partners Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak. OG True Detective creator/writer Nic Pizzolatto and season one director Cary Joji Fukanaga are still credited as executive producers—because they developed the original series—but they aren’t creatively involved in season four. That’s probably for the best, as both have been embroiled in controversies, Fukanaga more recently than Pizzolatto. That’s probably for the best, even setting aside the very legit real-world reasons not to work with those two. True Detective needs an overhaul, and Jodie Foster, Barry Jenkins, and Issa Lopez seem like a solid start.