Even though the fourth season of True Detective (subtitled Night Country) earned the highest viewership for the crime anthology series, I always find myself thinking of the first season when talking about the HBO show with family or friends. While Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are legends in their own right, their very tense but dynamic chemistry will always make me favor the first eight episodes. While I won’t go into any sort of spoilers (mainly because that’s how good it was for me and I don’t want people to miss out on it), I do want to know which season would you continue if given the chance? I’d love to hear your opinions on the Colin Farell, Mahershala Ali and Jodie Foster & Kali Reis renditions.
The anthology series is back for its fourth outing, titled True Detective: Night Country, which continues on Sunday (4 February) with Jodie Foster and Kali Reis in the lead roles.
Reviews of the new season have been positive, despite the bad-faith takes, with many praising its central performances – and going so far as to hail it as good as the hugely acclaimed first season, which aired in 2014 and starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.
However, there’s one complaint being levied against the show, and it’s to do with its opening titles – more specifically, the choice of song that plays over the credits.
To date, each season of True Detective – including the derided second outing – has been praised for its title track. Season one was The Handsome Family’s “Far from Any Road”, while Leonard Cohen song “Nevermind”, taken from his 2014 record Popular Problems, was selected as the opening for season two.
In season three, which starred Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff, the opening music was Cassandra Wilson’s cover of Son Hous track “Death Letter”, which meant season four had a lot to live up to.
Those tuning in to watch True Detective: Night Country swiftly realised that, this time around, the song is Billie Eilish’s “Bury a Friend” – and while it’s not the quality of the track that’s leaving people underwhelmed, there is a question mark surrounding how it made the cut considering it’s used in so many other films and TV shows.
The song, taken frm Eilish’s 2019 debut record When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, was most recently featured in the trailer for Madame Web, Sony’s Spider-Man spin-off starring Sydney Sweeney, which is due out next month. Among other things, the song also featured in the trailer for Carnival Row and Night Swim.
TV viewers can also hear the song in titles including The Society, Dickinson and Big Mouth, as well as the films Kimi, directed by Steven Soderbergh, and Sing 2.
One viewer wrote: “My only ‘real’ gripe is that they chose that Billie Eilish song for the theme. I like Eilish! It’s a good song! But it’s SO overdone for every single trailer/score. NEW SONGS, PEOPLE. PLEASE.”
Jodie Foster in ‘True Detective: Night Country’ (HBO)
Another added: “Billie Eilish for the new True Detective intro song is…. a choice that was made…” with one more viewer wading in: “There’s like 10 needle drops in the new True Detective and they’re all so boring and colourless but worse than all of them combined is the title sequence song, which is the same Billie Eilish song they used in the Madame Web trailer.”
