True Detective: Night Country’s creepy plot isn’t entirely fictional.
Season four’s showrunner Issa López was inspired by two mysteries that actually happened in real life – Mary Celeste and Dyatlov Pass.
In the first case, an American boat’s entire crew of 11 (the captain, his wife, young child, and eight staff) went missing en route to Italy in 1872. The boat was found near Portugal, with a lifeboat missing but largely undamaged and stocked with six months of food and drink.
In the latter, nine experienced Russian hikers froze to death away from their tent in the Ural Mountains in 1959. The bodies were found pretty much naked and barefoot, claims The New York Times.
Although the circumstances were blamed on a possible avalanche, Mexican filmmaker Issa doesn’t believe it.
‘An avalanche doesn’t explain a lot of the details I think. Even if it did, I prefer the strange, incomplete answer. I think there is a fascination with puzzles that are still missing a couple of pieces, and that obsess us, and make us angry, and make us not stop thinking about them,’ she told Vanity Fair.
In the opening episode of True Detective: Night Country, police chief Liz Danvers, played by the formidable Jodie Foster, arrives at the Tsalal Arctic Research Station in the middle of nowhere to discover that the eight scientists working there have disappeared.
What makes the situation even more mysterious, is their belongings including their mobile phones and a half-eaten sandwich are still in their home and workplace. In another moment that some of us may have to watch through our fingers, Liz then finds a severed tongue detached completely from its owner.
Soon viewers discover that the town of Ennis (which has been made up for the show) in Alaska has a lot of suspicious activity. Also, trying to solve the crime that may be connected to a murdered Native woman is Evangeline Navarro, played by Kali Reis.
Speaking about her decision to cast professional boxer and actor Kali, Issa said: ‘I thought that because we were going to be dealing with the very delicate subject – a little overused lately – of murdered and missing Indigenous women, that at least one of the detectives in the series should belong to the culture.
‘Because having white characters to come figure out what went wrong in there, I just don’t believe in that.’
Like the real-world cases, the six-parter will still leave you with questions after the final credits.
‘Not all of the details, not all of the questions are clarified at the end,’ Issa teased.
Although, viewers can go back and watch the first five episodes, which also stars John Hawkes, to look for clues she’s carefully placed throughout. In fact, the characters are right in front of you. We’ll be watching with a notebook and pen!
True Detective: Night Country is available to watch on Now.
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