Aidan Smith's TV week: True Detective (Sky Atlantic), American Nightmare (Netflix), Finders Keepers (C5), Big Boys (C4)

We can’t really do winter weather, do we? I mean, we might be child-like in our wonder at the concept, but the merest of icy blasts paralyses the country, only 0.000007 of the population know how to fit snow chains to their cars without ending up manacled and ready for a sex party - and this week the NHS had to rush out advice for frozen pavements: “To avoid falling, walk like a penguin.”

This isn’t mandatory but just wait: the next government will appoint a minister for it and he or she will be as tough as the new Secretary of State for Brushing Teeth.

Anyway, let’s journey 4,500 miles to Alaska for True Detective: Night Country (Sky Atlantic) where puffer jackets aren’t worn for fashion, polar bears are a road hazard, the sun has set over the small town of Ennis for winter and as Det Hank Prior says: “Third day of darkness, things start to get weird.”

This is the fourth series in the crime anthology and, now helmed by Mexican horror auteur Issa Lopez, it’s already looking like the weirdest yet thanks in no small part to the setting where there’s a vivid sense of every available source of illumination - car headlights, streetlamps, neon signs - straining to continue functioning in the near permanent whiteout. It’s a real edge-of-the-world kind of place where human connection borders on the desperate.

Jodie Foster in True Detective: Night Country.

Liz Danvers, Hank’s boss, is on Tinder alert. Evangeline Navarro, who had to be bumped out of the local force over her obsession with an unsolved murder and is now a state trooper, booty-calls her man in the middle of the night until, exhausted, he groans: “Next time, I ain’t picking up the phone.” And Hank? He’s getting married at Christmas. “To Natascha from the catalogue,” sniggers Liz. “She’s from Vladivostok,” he corrects.

Jodie Foster is Danvers. Her film credits are of course peerless but a TV career which began as a kid on The Doris Day Show hasn’t offered a series as high-end as this until now. True Detective is an odd-couple procedural and for the first time it’s two women with newcomer Kali Reis giving as good as she gets as the Indigenous sidekick. At one point Danvers sneers: “And you know this because a spirit animal came to you in a dream?” Navarro bites back: “My spirit animal eats old f****n’ white ladies like you for breakfast.”

Well, it’s another case with a strong supernatural element. A scientific research station has been hastily vacated with music still playing and sandwiches half eaten. “Dorks on a geek expedition?” suggests Hank. But you don’t just go out for a walk here, no matter that the boffins would probably not have to resort to the penguin waddle. Navarro thinks there’s a connection with her old murder. “That one sunk you before,” warns Travers. But the line “She’s awake!”, uttered at the beginning by one of the scientists who then shakes uncontrollably, is soon echoing in Travers’ nightmares. The only thing I’m fairly confident about in this terrifying tale is that we’ll hear it again, and probably more than once.

The title American Nightmare doesn’t tell us much. ITV’s documentary Trump: the Return? might have used it. And so could any number of true-crime shows. But it’s been claimed by Netflix for a reconstruction of a kidnap case which strangely shunned the obvious and more arresting, “The Real Gone Girl”.

James Buckley and Neil Morrissey in Finders Keepers.

You might have seen film-makers Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins’ The Tinder Swindler and this is no less astonishing. In 2015 in Vallejo, California Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn were woken in the dead of night by a home invader. Huskins was kidnapped and Quinn was soon being interrogated as the prime suspect. Then when Huskins reappeared, seemingly unscathed, she was accused of faking the kidnapping.

In 2015 true-crime wasn’t what it is now so I can’t accuse the detective of playing to the interview-room cameras, knowing that he might be on Netflix one day. Nevertheless, Matt Mustard - cue the Beatles song “Mean Mr Mustard” - is glimpsed very much enjoying his role. Indeed, given his name, you’d have to say he relishes it (ouch).

“I put a lot of puzzles together - I am the puzzle-maker,” he says. “How do I make it so you look like a monster?” He doesn’t believe Quinn’s version of events. The kidnapper was wearing a wetsuit and swim goggles? That’s too much detail.

The detail intrigues defence attorney Dan Russo. “This is insane,” he says. But he reckons Quinn is telling the truth. “I believe him in my heart but no one in f****n’ North America will.” Russo is straight out of Central Casting but I don’t think he’s hamming up his part. He seems like the kind of brief you’d want on your side against Mean Mr Mustard. Huskins’ return isn’t the end of it, however. The lurid fascination of the TV news networks ramps up when someone remembers the plot of Gone Girl - had Huskins suspected Quinn was cheating on her and contrived the abduction? I won’t tell you how American Nightmare ends but suffice to say: is it any wonder women who’re victims of crime are reluctant to come forward when they’re treated like this?

Before he starred in the TV show of the year if not the decade - you know the one I’m talking about - Toby Jones was a weekend treasure-hunter in the comedy Detectorists. Now for a drama about metal-detecting, called Finders Keepers (Channel 5) and featuring Neil Morrissey who gets a buzz out of the hobby and sometimes a shrill beeping but it’s never anything other than a rusty coke can or somesuch junk.

Then one afternoon down Somerset way Morrissey’s Martin happens across Anglo-Saxon gold. He wants to do the right thing, “surrender it to the Crown” and wait for the possible reward. But his wide-boy soon-to-be son-in-law (The Inbetweeners’ James Buckley) suggests they try and sell it to a collector for half a million. “Charlie doesn’t need any more gold,” he says. “Have you seen his coach?”

Under financial pressure, not least from the cost of the wedding, decent, dull Martin agrees. He’s never done anything like this before. And, judging by next week’s trailer, a pleasant little show is about to get heavy (metal). But what will real detectorists think? That their pastime is being traduced, or sexed-up?

Channel 4’s comedy Big Boys is back for a second season and for Danny (Jon Pointing) and Jack (Dylan Llewellyn) a second year at uni, so they should be getting the hang of campus life, but they’re not having nearly enough sex, and especially when compared to their Scottish mate Corinne (Edinburgh’s Izuka Hoyle).

Jack Rooke’s semi-autobiographical show is profound about male friendship and pleasingly clarty with it. Jack is gay and Danny straight but they couldn’t be tighter, always there for each other, and that’s despite the latter’s preferences for “Lynx Africa boxsets and Jeremy Clarkson’s bull**** books”. There are jokes about Liz Truss who must be the softest of targets for comedy but I’ll forgive Big Boys that.