True Detective season 4 is confirmed and a double Oscar winner is on board

True Detective
(Image credit: HBO)

True Detective is getting a fourth outing as details of its latest iteration have finally been revealed. 

Launching in 2014, the show has run for three seasons thus far with the latest airing in 2019. True Detective is an anthology with each of the three seasons featuring a different cast of characters, a different time and location and a self-contained narrative, with no connection between the seasons at all. 

There had been speculation that the show's third run, which starred Mahershala Ali, would be its last, but that has proven not to be the case, though there are big changes afoot for the new run. 

According to Deadline, the show's fourth run is to be named True Detective: Night Country and will star Jodie Foster in the leading role. 

Nabbing Foster is quite the coup for the HBO Max show as the actress, who has won two Best Actress Academy Awards for her roles in The Accused and The Silence Of The Lambs, has not appeared on television in a major role since 1975. 

Foster has been far more selective about her on-screen roles with only political drama The Mauritanian and a small part in dystopian drama Hotel Artemis coming in the last five years. The actress has largely focused on her directing career, which has seen her behind the camera on shows like Orange Is The New Black, Black Mirror and Tales From The Loop.

She has though been tempted back by HBO and a chance to solve another bleak crime...

Do you have any details on the plot?

A few, and we're off to the icy worlds of Alaska. 

Foster is booked to play Detectives Liz Danvers, who along with a partner named Evangeline Navarro, are asked to try and to solve the case of six men that operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station. 

All six of the men have vanished without a trace near the town of Ennis in Alaska. Naturally, given the past iterations of True Detective have just been as much about the detectives themselves as the case they're solving, you'd expect plenty of inner turmoil to surface as Danvers and Navarro get to work. 

A new cast, but the same creative team?

Not this time. 

Nic Pizzolatto, who created the show and has overseen each of the previous seasons, is stepping back to an executive producer role and a new creative team is in place. 

Issa López, a Mexican filmmaker, is booked to both write and direct this run, while Alan Page Arriaga, one of the key team on Apple TV Plus hit Shining Girls, is also on the writing team. The list of executives for the show is now very starry with Barry Jenkins on there alongside original stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, Pizzolatto, and No Time To Die director Cary Joji Fukunaga. 


Analysis: A new start for True Detective?

It's hard to talk about clean slates or new starts for True Detective because every season is just that. 

The show's first run, which followed Harrelson and McConaughey as they both tried to solve and look back on a particularly vicious ritualistic murder, won huge acclaim. The second, a tangled mess with Colin Farrell, Taylor Kitsch, Rachel McAdams and Vince Vaughn, almost killed the show. Then the third, where Ali and Stephen Dorff headed to the Ozarks to find out what happened to two missing children, sat somewhere in between. 

But with Jodie Foster and a new team, you can't help but get a bit excited for a new run of True Detective, whenever it comes to HBO Max. 

Tom Goodwyn
Freelance Entertainment Writer

Tom Goodwyn was formerly TechRadar's Senior Entertainment Editor. He's now a freelancer writing about TV shows, documentaries and movies across streaming services, theaters and beyond. Based in East London, he loves nothing more than spending all day in a movie theater, well, he did before he had two small children…