Because of their prolonged darkness, the polar regions have long been preferred settings for mystery and horror stories. John Carpenter knew this all too well. The visionary director took full advantage of this existential despair with his science fiction horror film The Thing (1982). One of the best ‘body horror’ movies of its era, Carpenter used the desolate frozen landscape to emphasise the growing suspicion among Kurt Russell’s group of survivors as they were being picked off one by one by a terrifying, shape-shifting alien.

Which brings me nicely to True Detective’s fourth instalment, Night Country. The six-part Sky Atlantic/HBO series that concluded last week. But don’t expect to be glued to your seat. In terms of building a sense of atmosphere and suspense, Night Country is a very average, middle-of-the-road affair. Think of The Carpenters more than John Carpenter. Compared to The Thing, Night Country couldn’t be more different. Poles apart, if you can forgive the pun.

The fictional Alaskan town of Essen is 150 kilometres from the Arctic Circle and serves as the setting for True Detective: Night Country. After inexplicably wandering into a storm, a group of scientists working at the nearby research station are discovered inside a frozen ‘corpsicle’. Two tough, mismatched Alaskan police officers, Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), are assigned the case.

The two waste little time expressing how angry and bitter they are. As demonstrated by the manner in which Navarro consistently treats the man she hooks up with on a regular basis. Danvers has to work with her ex-husband, who – probably because he is white – is a deadbeat dad. He is portrayed as a womanising and abusive man who enjoys beating their son, who also happens to be a new police officer at the station.

The show’s premise is to draw attention to the flawed nature of the human condition. True Detective is about profoundly troubled individuals struggling with the philosophical implications of morality in the face of heinous acts of depravity. The first season illustrates this clearly when Rustin ‘Rust’ Cohle and Martin ‘Marty’ Hart (Woody Harrelson), detectives with the Louisiana State Police, are given the case of a young woman who was brutally murdered by a group that is thought to be a cult because it bears all the hallmarks of ritualised killing.

The investigation gradually destroys their lives. It emphasises the central idea of the season, which is that time is not linear and resisting fate will only make you suffer its consequences forever. The alleged murderer utters the now famous line, ‘Time is a flat circle…’ as they catch up with him. The first season, which takes place in 1995, switches between multiple timelines. In a scene from 2012, a dishevelled Cohle declares, ‘Everything we’ve ever done or will do, we’re going to do over and over and over again.’ Rust Cohle, played by Matthew McConaughey, had a compelling and genuine role that defined him.

The first season, which heavily borrows from Robert Chambers and Arthur Schopenhauer, is a Southern Gothic thriller drenched in philosophical nihilism. Nic Pizzolatto wrote a phenomenal, character-driven murder mystery. Cohle’s existential musings and Marty’s working-class family dynamic contrast wonderfully.

It worked because Pizzolatto had years to research the themes in True Detective. He handed the writing to Issa López for Night Country, but it was a rushed process due to the time constraints associated with modern scheduling. Night Country suffers from that very modern disease killing off entertainment: ‘re-imagining’. Speaking to Vanity Fair, López said, ‘Where True Detective [season 1] is male and it’s sweaty, Night Country is cold and it’s dark and it’s female.’

Although Foster was superb in The Silence of the Lambs as the youthful, aspirational Clarice Starling, she is miscast in this role. It’s not her fault. Her character is poorly written. Danvers fares a little better. Reis – a real-life former boxing champion – seems to be there to challenge our preconceived notions of femininity. She isn’t given an opportunity to reach her full potential, though. All she can do is fold her arms and look menacing.

Plot and character have always been at the heart of True Detective. Night Country is devoid of both. There’s no chemistry between Danvers and Navarro, and their contrived toughness comes across as desperate. It looks like a serialised Fast and the Furious movie set in the North Pole. López seems to believe that if you have your protagonists act like over-sexualized thugs and pepper every episode with f-bombs, it will be relatable. The problem is that an unlikable person makes it impossible for the audience to relate to them. It just seems a little naive and immature.

I wanted to give up by the end of the second episode, when Danvers’s Native American lesbian daughter attends a climate change protest. To cut a long story short, Native American women are honourable and moral, and white men are evil and motivated only by greed. Oh, and ghosts are better detectives than humans.

Season one was superb. Seasons two and three were distinctly average, and the less said about Night Country, the better. Strangely, the fourth season of the anthology has garnered excellent reviews and is now the most watched. My cynical side would contend that this is because they merely included a cryptic allusion to season one in the hope that viewers would tune in. It means Season 5 has been confirmed. After five years of waiting for True Detective to return, it has been haunting my dreams. Indeed, time is a flat circle.