Max Really Hopes 'True Detective' Will Keep Subscribers Around Until 'House of Dragon' Returns

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 4, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 4, 2023 |

I am not familiar with Issa López, the Mexican writer and film director who wrote and directed all episodes of the next installment of HBO’s True Detective series, Night Country. However, before becoming a celebrated writer/director (and a collaborator with Guillermo del Toro), Lopez was an award-winning novelist, which would seem to make her well-suited to True Detective (creator Nic Pizzolatto also began as a novelist).

The name on the marquee, however, is Jodie Foster, working in television for the first time since she was a child. She is paired here with another detective, played by Kali Reis, and you can be forgiven if you don’t know who she is. Reis is a professional boxer and a very good one, but her acting experience is limited, so far, to Catch The Fair One, for which she was nominated for best female lead at the 2021 Independent Spirit Awards.

Her screen time is also limited in the Night Country trailer, so it’s difficult to assess her acting skills. She and Foster play detectives who are at odds investigating the disappearance of eight scientists working in Alaska. “To solve the case, Detectives Liz Danvers and Evangeline Navarro will have to confront the darkness they carry in themselves and dig into the haunted truths that lie buried under the eternal ice.”

Readers may also recognize in the trailer the spiral that connects Night Country with earlier seasons of the series. There are also supernatural elements in the trailer, though I assume they’re probably dream sequences.

Max, which is limping into the new year, will premiere Night Country on January 14th as its efforts to keep subscribers from unsubscribing before season two of House of Dragon continues. According to the first teaser trailer, that won’t be until Summer 2024.