It has been another busy week for fans of men whining on the internet. I mean, when isn’t it? But there has been one particularly engaging meltdown in recent days: Nic Pizzolatto throwing a tantrum over his own show.
Pizzolatto is the creator of the TV franchise True Detective, the first season of which starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and was quickly inducted into the annals of “golden age” TV. The fourth season has just come to an end on HBO (Sky in the UK). Starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, True Detective: Night Country is set inside the Arctic Circle in the middle of winter and faithfully recreates many of the staples of the series: odd-couple cops, an untamed landscape, a suggestion of the occult and some grotesque murders. There are even elements of homage, including allusions to McConaughey’s celebrated ruminations on the nature of time. But did Pizzolatto like it? No, he did not.
Who knows how much of Pizzolatto’s distaste for Night Country comes from it being the first True Detective story that he neither wrote nor directed, with those roles this time going to the Mexican director Issa López. Regardless, Pizzolatto has been criticising the show since its first episode, warning fans they “can’t blame me” if they don’t like it. Since the finale, he has doubled down, sharing screeds from other (male) internet users on his Instagram. Among the key criticisms: the writing in the finale was “some of the sloppiest … I’ve ever watched”, while the show in general was a “hot mess of faux character archs [sic]” which made “repeated heavy-handed attempts” to show that “Man=Problem”. (Now that’s a tattoo-worthy phrase if ever there was one).
Pizzolatto has since, ostentatiously, created a space on his Insta solely for “trolling/support/infighting” around True Detective and the “absolute moral degeneracy and misogyny of anyone who did not think it was good”. Which certainly sounds as if he is over it. And while he is probably using the word “misogyny” sarcastically, it may be a good moment for him to reflect on his actions.
López, meanwhile, has responded gracefully: “I believe that every storyteller has a very specific, peculiar, and unique relation to the stories they create, and whatever his reactions are, he’s entitled to them,” she told Vulture earlier in the run. “[Night Country] is a reinvention, and it is different. And anybody that wants to join is welcome.”
It is difficult to imagine what it would require to remain graceful in the face of consistent criticism from a colleague (López and Pizzolatto are executive producers on Night Country). López’s politeness perhaps also reflects a confidence in her work, something that has been vindicated on screen.
While internet males may consider the season to be a traumatising dud (check the opening paragraph of this review for some heartfelt comments), viewing figures have made it the most popular of the four series so far. The number of people watching has grown as it has gone along and the finale was the highest audience for any individual episode. There is a possibility that this happened because people liked what they saw on the screen.
Night Country did things the other True Detectives did not, and not just by giving decent parts to female characters. It extended the lives of its principals beyond an obsession with their work (although that remained too). It made romantic and familial relations as important as any police procedure, giving the show a richer feel and leaving the characters more rounded. While the Wiccan handicrafts and daubed spirals of season one made a return, they were joined by decaying ghosts and ugly apparitions, creating real moments of horror alongside the pervasive American gothic. Also, and no small matter this, the show tied its plots together by the end, which is not something Pizzolatto always achieved. (As for the “men=problem” problem, the most heroic character in the show is male and all the women have problems!)
Night Country wasn’t perfect. Some of the dialogue was clunky. If anything, it leaned too far into the horror, while a suspension of disbelief was required if you were truly to believe the world it created. At the same time, it was clearly the best True Detective since the original, opening up new possibilities for the franchise (not least a second outing for detectives Danvers and Navarro). It also did something that may have a wider significance: it created a gritty show about tough cops who happened to be women. Perhaps Pizzolatto may yet be inspired by it.
