True Detective is an American drama series that stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as Detectives Rustin Cohle and Martin Hart respectively. The show utilizes different timelines in order to present their investigation of a murder committed in Louisiana in the 1995, and another similar murder committed in 2012. Currently the show has ran one episode, with a total of eight episodes planned for this first season.
Imagine the pitch for this show; ‘It’s Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as two Louisiana detectives’ – Only HBO could have pulled the weight to make that happen. These two steal the show with their performances; McConaughey as the quiet, misanthropic loner with a darkness behind his eyes, and Harrelson as the more senior, level-headed family man with apparent secrets of his own. In the first episode that I saw, the temporal jump in the narrative works extremely well; In 2012 Hart and Cohle are both being interviewed separately about their 1995 investigation, and the difference between them is astounding in this seventeen-year jump. Cohle appears unwashed, unshaven and malnourished during his interview, and demands that one of the investigators go out and buy him beer, because ‘it’s past twelve, and it’s Thursday’. Hart on the other hand seems as cool and collected as his younger self, and it is cited that the two had a disagreement and a falling out some time earlier.
This show is only going to get better, I feel. With stellar performances by the leading men and a story that screams suspense (maybe not screams, maybe it whispers loudly) a great narrative structure and even music composed by T Bone Burnett – the executive music producer on the Coen brothers latest outing; Inside Llewyn Davis. Seriously, this show cannot go wrong, and if it does then colour me sad.