True Detective Season 4’s Perfect Replacement

One of the great crime series out there at the moment, with a 100 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Dark Winds can be viewed on Netflix.

Zahn McClarnon charmingly leads the series with raw and visceral performance.

Steeped in rich culture and character development, its three seasons are set in the Navajo Nation in the 1970s. Dark Winds finds a genre that has room for both crime-solving and cultural storytelling.

AMC’s dark crime series Dark Winds has finally arrived on Netflix – a top-notch followup to the newest season of True Detective. Set in the 1970s in an expanded version of the Arizona portion of Navajo Nation, Dark Winds is based on a series of novels by the late and beloved Tony Hillerman, the White author of Hopi heritage who helped popularise the Southwest region of the US through his mysteries centred on Native characters.

Dark Winds is produced by Robert Redford and George R R Martin, the latter best known for adapting the detailed worlds of his fantasy novels such as A Song of Ice and Fire (adapted as the HBO series Game of Thrones). Dark Winds was renewed after the first season, which was released as a six-hour-long movie split over two parts, and it will have a third season.

Dark Winds follows tribal police detective Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and his sergeant, Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten), an archeologist who joins forces when they form a task force together with a newcomer deputy Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) to investigate a complicated and gory murder.

Aside from a few characters in the cast of Dark Winds – most notably Noah Emmerich’s smarmy, corrupt FBI Agent Whitover – there’s a wealth of Indigenous talent here. The Navajo Nation setting feels authentic, too, with a nearly constant music track in the Diné bizaad language. All of it adds up to a meticulously crafted show, one that impresses critics and audiences alike. Indeed, if you want something to fill the role that True Detective had in our TV watching lives, specifically the most-viewed season 4, Dark Winds is finally on Netflix.

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Dark Winds Has An Astounding 100% On Rotten Tomatoes

Both Seasons Have A Perfect Rating

As of this writing, Dark Winds scored a remarkable 100 per cent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes – that’s for both seasons 1 and 2. That number will, of course, drop at some point no matter how far the series runs but, by way of comparison, you may recall that other much-touted, prestige series that drew rave reviews had lower critics scores: Breaking Bad at 96 per cent; Succession at 95 per cent; Better Call Saul at 98 per cent; Mad Men at 95 per cent; Magpie Murders at 100 per cent; Stranger Things at 94 per cent. All of which is impressive, even with just two seasons completed (at present).

Characteristically taut and atmospheric, Dark Winds season 1 is set in a place Hollywood typically doesn’t spFFL coiffure spend much time on – Navajo Nation – and in a time period, the 1970s, we rarely get in TV procedurals, which is an additional patina of polish to everything. The tight, twisty storytelling also combines Indigenous mythology and belief with the down-and-dirty grit of a police procedural matched with local power brokers to create a heady mixture. But it’s Zahn McClarnon, who is the show.

Its tightly coiled sense of story has Indigenous mythology and belief lean on the grittily grounded stuff of police procedural and local corruption in a pure, potent cocktail.

Dark Winds Finally Gives Zahn McClarnon The Lead Role He Deserves

The Role Does Justice To His Talent And Depth As An Actor

Zahn McClarnon has been working as a Hollywood journeyman actor for around four decades. After a handful of bit parts, he landed guest roles on many TV shows – playing in every possible capacity the stereotyped, Hollywoodised Native American, or what he once described as ‘dialectically challenged – the “ethnically ambiguous” character’. By the 2010s, as he moved into better, smaller supporting roles, the meat came in arguably the past decade: Officer Mathias in Longmire, Hanzee Dent in Fargo, Crow Daddy in Doctor Sleep, and a whole lot more. The past three years alone have brought his best roles to date: Big in Reservation Dogs, arguably an all-timer.

But in Dark Winds he gets, arguably, his best and only character part (and certainly his very best vehicle) an appearance truly worthy of both the star and the tone of the man. Joe Leaphorn is a character to play hard – a man traumatised, a man grieving, a man who keeps his feelings controlled.

But you can see the hurt registering through McClarnon’s eyes, soft and containable but quietly compelling. It might just be his best screen appearance – the best work in front of the camera he’s ever produced – given he’d never had material with the richness and complexity of character he deserves. With Dark Winds now on Netflix, legions more people will now get to see what critics like me have been saying about Zahn McClarnon for years.