If you’ve been curious about True Detective: Night Country, but don’t have an HBO or Max subscription, prepare to be further tempted: episode one is now streaming free on YouTube. Writer-director Issa López’s (Tigers Are Not Afraid) new installment of the anthology series is an Alaska-set tale that tips its fur-lined cap to John Carpenter’s The Thing; it also features a rare TV series appearance by Jodie Foster, in a role that calls back to 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs.
Night Country will run a total of six episodes, with the fourth installment dropping Sunday, February 4. The season opener sets in motion its tale of two Alaska cops (played by Foster and Kali Reis) who must reluctantly set aside their personal beef to work a gruesome, bizarre case together. It begins just as the region enters its season of perpetual night, and involves a group of scientists who disappear while working at an isolated research station, the cold-case murder of an Indigenous woman targeted for her environmental activism, a small town filled with secrets, and… it’s implied… something supernatural lurking in the icy dark.
The rest of the cast includes Andor’s Fiona Shaw, Doctor Who’s Christopher Eccleston, and Deadwood’s John Hawkes, but so far it’s mostly been the Foster and Reis show—playing complicated women who can’t stand each other but also can’t stand the idea of the macabre mystery in their midst going unsolved. Carpenter fans are advised to keep their eyes peeled for the Easter eggs referencing his much-loved 1982 sci-fi horror classic; López has also said Night Country draws on The Shining and Alien, and there are ties to the first season of True Detective, too.
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Watch episode one on YouTube—or catch up on the entire series so far on Max.
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