True Detective director slams ‘bros’ for review-bombing new Jodie Foster series

True Detective: Night Country showrunner Issa López has slammed “hardcore fanboys” of the show’s first series, claiming they are purposefully dragging down ratings for the latest, female-led, season. 

The fourth season of the HBO crime series, starring queer icon Jodie Foster, premiered on Sunday (14 January) to high critic reviews, with a 92 per cent fresh score on reviews site Rotten Tomatoes. The audience score, however, sits at a slightly lower 72 per cent.

In a now-deleted tweet, López blamed the lower scores on fans of series one – which came out in 2014 and starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson – claiming fan “bros” are leaving a deluge of low ratings for series four. 

The first series has a mostly male lead cast, with critic Emma Lirette describing it as a “show about men living in a brutally masculine world”. In comparison, series four stars a mostly female lead cast. 

According to Variety, López wrote on Twitter/X, “So, if you liked last night’s [episode], and have a Rotten Tomatoes account, maybe head over there and leave an audience review? 

“The bros and hardcore fanboys of [Season 1] have made it a mission to drag the rating down, and it’s kind of sad, considering all the 5 star ones.”

After deleting the post on X/Twitter, she added that the audience score had previously been “way lower”, and that the current 72 per cent score represented an improvement, adding that many fans of series one had been “lovely” about the new season.

“Many a (lovely) bro and hard-core fan of S1 have been friggin’ lovely and willing to try something new, made in big part for them and for the love they feel for TD. To those of you: I salute you. And I thank you kindly,” she wrote.

Jodie Foster, who plays detective Liz Danvers in True Detective’s fourth season, said she was “shocked” to be part of an all-female detective team in the show. 

“The beauty of anthology series is you get something new every time, reinventing this narrative and taking it in completely different directions,” she told USA Today in an interview.

“And it’s shocking to me, of course, that while there have been female detectives, we’re the first female detective team.”

True Detective: Night Country is available to stream on Max in the US and Sky in the UK.

• Drag
• Jan 03

Start your engines! All 16 seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race US ranked from worst to best