In the first season of HBO’s fictional detective anthology, True Detective (Monday, 2am & 9pm, Sky Atlantic), Louisiana State Police investigator and bucket-seat philosopher Rust Cohle made philosophical sport out of confusing his slower-witted partner Marty Hart with words. In one memorable early ride through the morally fetid swamplands, he noted: “As sentient meat, however illusory our identities are, we craft those identities by making value judgments.” To which eventually Marty drawls: “What’s scented meat?”
But that was last year. The mighty Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have driven off into the queasy sunset exchanging bants about the eternal battle between light and dark, and creator Nic Pizzolatto has rustled up a new story, in a new mythic American setting, with new cops played by new film stars. As if in answer to Marty’s complaint that Rust continually “sat in judgment”, one of the new intake, Colin Farrell’s moustachioed Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy turned detective, states for the record: “I welcome judgment.”
If anyone’s sitting in judgment, though, it’s us. Whether or not it changed the face of television over those eight novelistic episodes – and, on paper, it was just another ritualistic serial-killer drama with scenes of a sexual nature – it must, by design, start again. Unlike FX’s similarly anthological American Horror Story, which reuses a repertory cast for each season, True Detective promises to reset for each new incarnation (and HBO has signed Pizzolatto for at least one more after this).
It is its own hard act to follow. If you liked McConaughey and Harrelson, you might not warm so instantly to Farrell, a sad boozer with a short fuse, or Vince Vaughn’s bloated LA crime lord looking to go legit in a rerun of every gangster movie ever. And while Rust was lyrical and verbose, the new guys speak in terse gobbets: “Swerves into traffic. High. Freaks. I’m getting flashed”; “I ain’t looking forward to jerking off in no cup”.
With Pizzolatto writing every single episode, giving continuity to the regenerative brand, it’s a shame that the winning decision to have one director (Cary Fukunaga) oversee the whole first season has been junked in favour of the more conventional revolving carousel of megaphone-wielders. The first two episodes are directed by Fast & Furious mainstay Justin Lin, who actually keeps things slow and languorous, except when Taylor Kitsch’s damaged Iraq-vet California Highway Patrolman is gunning his bike so fast his pretty face actually flaps with G-force.
The inciting murder in the first episode (titled The Western Book Of the Dead and possibly involving a Maltese Falcon) links our principals via politics, porn and a proposed $68bn high-speed rail link, whose attendant commercial development means there’s one of those impressive architect’s models – dramatic shorthand for corruption. Third billing after Farrell and Vaughn is Rachel McAdams, whose uptight Ventura County detective we hope will see off season one’s accusations of casual misogyny. As Vaughn threateningly asserts: “A good woman moderates our basest tendencies.”
The Hollywood sign has yet to be glimpsed in this more iconoclastic vision of the outlying towns of Los Angeles County; first among them, the fictional Vinci. “The most corrupt city in LA County,” according to a local newspaper exposé, Vinci’s motto is “Towards Tomorrow”, its emblem belching industrial chimneys.
A cable drama can always be judged by its moody credits sequence, and the first season’s Handsome Family have been usurped by Leonard Cohen, croaking, “I dug some graves you’ll never find”, over surreal aerial shots dissolving into roads, silhouettes and drugstores in blood red. This augurs well. But until we’ve moved a little closer towards tomorrow, it might be best to reserve judgment on this latest consignment of scented meat.
