Early in Dark Winds, a new crime series from AMC, a member of the Navajo Tribal Police, driving along a dusty desert road in his patrol truck, reminds a rookie officer of the scale of what they face: “On a good day, we’ve got 50 tribal officers to patrol 27,000 square miles. You break down out here, it could be hours before someone even notices you’re missing.”

Set in the 1970s and based on the beloved “Leaphorn and Chee” series of crime novels by Tony Hillerman, Dark Winds is the latest moody miniseries in the True Detective mold. It features some of the conceits that have become common to that genre, including multiple timelines (although, in Dark Winds’s case, the flashbacks are relatively brief), vague gestures to the supernatural, and an ostensive enthusiasm for grit and accuracy.