True Detective, S1E1
WARNING: This review contains spoilers.
We are all living in pessimistic realism.
HBO's new drama series, True Detective, is a show pairing two cops as they track a serial killer. This genre has been done to death, right? Well, maybe not. If Criminal Minds had one too many drinks at the bar and found itself in bed with The Wire, the offspring may look much like True Detective.
This new anthology offers us two A-listers as the leads, as Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey star as Det. Martin Hart and Det. Rust Cohle, respectively. Hart and Cohle. Get it? Say it again, then. And this is where familiar ground ends.
Hart is your archetypal southern family man, a go-along get-along cop. Cohle is the aloof loner, who just happens to be a brilliant detective. Hart has a pretty wife, two kids, and lives the American Dream in a three-bedroom house. Cohle lives in a spartan one-bedroom apartment with only a mattress on the floor and a cross on the wall. Except he is not religious; he uses the cross to meditate and ponder his own godless existence. And he battles an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.
These two Louisiana CID detectives pull a murder scene, where a young prostitute has been murdered and left posed in some kind of serial killer fantasy crime scene. With deer antlers. You have seen this stuff before. Literally.
But what you have not seen, at least in enough depth, is the effect that investigating crimes such as this has on the detectives. Hart has to drink himself to sleep; Cohle has to buys some Quaaludes off of a criminal informant. Sleep is a valuable commodity to those folks working the front lines between the psychotics and the rest of us. And sometimes, some of that psychosis can rub off on those front line grunts.
The show vacillitates between 2012 and 1995, and the depositions of Hart and Cohle, taken by detectives investigating a murder much like the one that former partners Hart and Cohle investigated and allegedly solved 17 years earlier. As the season progresses, the story of what shaped these two men into what they are today will evolve. And further development of McConaughey's Cohle will be fun to watch.
McConaughey and Harrelson bring some world-class acting chops to this show. You have seen good actors with great scripts working other shows well, but this show (at least the pilot) is bordering on 'masterpiece'. These two guys, within minutes, have you invested in Cohle and Hart, and you forget all about "Mr. Alright, Alright, Alright" and Billy Hoyle.
HBO appears to have hit another home run with this series, as it ranks up there with contemporary fare such as Rectified and Top of the Lake. Its one of those shows that is made for binge watching; waiting a week between episodes just seems patently unfair.
Random Thoughts:
- So Hart isn't a faithful family man. How long before Cohle has Mrs. Hart over to his apartment?
- Love the cinematography! Rural Louisiana looks both beautiful and depressing.
- McConaughey's weight loss from Dallas Buyers Club is obvious, but his gaunt appearance sells his portrayal of tormented Cohle even better.
- Michelle Monaghan's role as Hart's wife seems pedestrian, compared to the other well-written characters in the show.
- A Clarke Peters sighting as a local preacher!
What did you think?
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