WORDS Eva Short
If there is anything our generation can be thankful for it is that we are entering adulthood in what is truly the Golden Age of Television. There’s a consensus that within the last five years the calibre of programming is outstanding. Amid a sea of riveting, well-crafted television shows it can be difficult to know which series are truly worth one’s time. In the case of True Detective however, the answer is clear: begin watching now, as it will undoubtedly become a fixture in the annals of television history.
Detectives Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rustin Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) once worked together as partners in the Louisiana Homicide Department. The show jumps between 1995 and 2012, documenting the two periods in equal measure. In 1995, the two are investigating a series of occultist killings in the Louisiana backwoods. Years on, both are being questioned separately about these killings when the murderer they assumed had been caught appears to have resurfaced. Through slow and masterful execution, we begin to see the investigation unfurl in the flashbacks while gaining a perspective into how the young men working a case in 1995 became the wizened individuals being interrogated about it years later.
There are two terms which best describe this eight-part feature: “refined” and “bleak”. Refined in the sense that while this show elegantly engages familiar detective and noir tropes, it manages not to fall into the trap of relying on cliches. These tropes are reworked with understated, softly lit visuals and faultless dialogue. Quality, however, is not all that makes creator Nic Pizzolatto’s show eminently fascinating; it is the sense of dread, somehow irresistible in its unrelenting pessimism, that makes this show unique. This dread is created both by the muted yet desolate setting and what is probably the show’s most fascinating character, Rustin Cohle. Cohle — excellently portrayed by McConaughey in yet another “McConnaissance” performance — is an intellectual, a talented detective who believes that the human consciousness is a “tragic misstep in human evolution”. He frequently espouses the view that mankind should collectively refuse to reproduce and allow themselves to opt out of the “raw deal” of existence within one generation. While Cohle’s more domestic and narrow-minded partner Martin responds with frustration at this revelation along with the other profound and bleak statements Cohle makes, the spectator cannot help but be taken in, nodding along with McConaughey’s sober Texan drawl.
True Detective is televisual art, taking its place alongside The Wire, Breaking Bad and The Sopranos as one of the shows that proved to the world that television as a medium is not just for vapid reality shows and trifling sitcoms, but a form that can be utilised by the literary and directorial geniuses of our time.
Grade: I
