A disappointing fall season, a bereft holiday schedule and the emptiness felt following the finales of favorite series have conspired to make even the die-hard TV watcher despair the future.
That all changes tonight with the start of “True Detective” (HBO, 9 p.m.), a master-quality series that begins with a single, compelling story told from a couple of different directions. A young woman has been murdered and artfully posed in the disturbing, post-“Dexter” mode that’s been copied on shows like “The Following.”
But this one,deep in swampy, atmospheric Louisiana swamps, dotted with oil refineries and revivaltents, attracts a couple of laconic investigators played by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. The two movie stars bring a deft touch and consideral skills to their roles as investigators who don’t quite get along.
Harrelson’s Martin Hart is a wary investigator who thinks of himself as a good family man who is hiding some deep hypocrisies. McConoughey’s complex, drawling Rust Cohle is a mystical, on the wagon investigator when the crime unfolds in 1995. But when they flash forward to 2012 the two are being interrogated. Hart is older and frazzled, but something big has happened to Cohle, who with his ponytail and cigarettes and beer looks like he’s been off the grid for a few years. Questions arise why there is an investigation at all — are the two being accused of something? Are they re-examining the original crime?
So in addition to the crime solving, there are the beginnings and ends of their partnership, with the eight episodes meant to fill in what happens in between. But just as strong as the plot is the setting and the photography. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga whose work spans “Jane Eyre” to “Sin Nombre,” is behind the camera of every episode.
The series comes from former novelist Nic Pizzolatto, who plans future seasons that will feature wholly different stories and casts, in the tradition of the pulpy tales once published under the title.
It’s the kind of addiction that will make the week seem long as you await the next.
Part of the pleasure is McConaughey’s spaced out, intense, philosophical character who changes so shockingly. As he told writers at the TV Critics Association winter press tour this week, “Who is he in ’95? Here’s a guy who is coming back on to a case, just barely hanging onto the rails. He needs a case to keep his shit together, literally. 2012, he’s off the rails. He’s cashed in. He’s fallen prey to his own beliefs. And every day that he’s alive is another day of penance in this indentured servitude he calls life. So yeah, it’s a comedy.”
“What happened in the 17 year interim to these two men?” McConaughey continues. “You’re going to find out. Am I telling the truth? Is what he’s telling the truth? Where are our stories the same? Where do they veer from what really happened? That’s the fun basically, what happened in that 17 years and how we’re connected is really the fun of the eight episodes.”
Of McConaughey’s role, Harrelson said, “I can’t imagine anybody playing that part better, you know. It was just it was phenomenal, you know. And so he played a much different role from what I’ve ever seen him play before, but I think he knocked it out of the park.”