Sunday, March 23, 2014

True Detective: Season One Review (2014) (No Spoilers)


Another cop show on TV? Oooo-Ahhhh. Fortuantly for any doubters, this isn't a CSI, NCIS, Law & Order attempt of charades on a weekly basis. True Detective is an eight episode series that is amazing from start to finish.


Detective Rust Cohle (Mathew McConaughey) and Detective Marty Hard (Woody Harrelson) open the series investigating a dead woman's body wrangled with antlers - in the middle of no where - next to a tree. It's a confronting opening but will hopefully prepare you for that is to come. For you are watching HBO programming and that means - they can do whatever the hell they want.

You soon learn that this is the past and in the  future/present both Rust and Marty are being questioned (on there own behalf) about, well everything. True Detective switches between past and present through-out the series and each side developing it's own plot at a nice past for an eventual meeting point.

True Detectives story and pacing was questioned by a lot of people online within the first couple episodes. I was on board from the beginning, but some likened to argue nothing happens. Truth be told, if you don't like lots of talking in your on-screen viewing than this isn't going to be the show for you. If you however like a great script, acting, camera work or anything that resembles fantastic and brilliant television than yeah, True Detective is all of that and much more.

True Detectives opener 'The Long Bright Dark' sets up the award very different partnership of Rust and Marty. McConaughey continuing to surprise with his somewhat 180 of his career. He is absolute memorizing and brilliant. The what could be considered over the top monologues soon become part of his character and believable not the writer and actor trying to be clever. Harrelson is also brilliant and the two really carry this show into a next level with there chemistry.

Although the male cast are all great, True Detective struggles with it's female characters. Marty's Wife, Maggie (Michelle Monaghan) falls into at least a few 'Cop Wife' tropes and she is the leading lady of the show  It just would have been nice for the only Woman on the show not being basically a hooker or stripper to show some character and be enjoyable not annoying and predictable.

Episode Four 'Who Goes There" is the most action like episode of the entire show and they pull no punches with it. For a show that features barley any action, when they do go to do an action like sequence, it's amazing and proves to be one of the best episodes of TV in recent memory. No Spoilers, but the last six minutes is draw dropping .


True Detective has already started to spawn fandom online and I'm there, it's a show that probably wasn't made for it but is full of features for people to cling to easily. It's gif-able, quotable and t-shirt design-able.

The unfortunate matter is that once you have watched 'Form and Void' the series finale, there will be no more Rust and Marty. True Detective is to be an anthology show like American Horror Story, where each new year they are new characters and new stories.

I seriously doubt anything else on TV in 2014 or maybe even in cinemas will top the fantastic script and characters, cinematography, acting and direction of True Detective - I implore you to watch this dark and brilliant show.

+ 'Who Goes There'
+ McConaughey and Harrelson
+ Perfect Finale
- Female Characters

Overall: 9.5

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