True Detective Series One

No Regrets For Our Sleuth

True Detective Series One
8 episodes February - April 2014
USA HBO

I’ve been wanting to catch up with True Detective for a while now... since hearing about Series Four, in which Jodie Foster apparently takes on a story with a supernatural horror element. And, despite the fact that each series is set in a different location and telling the story of different characters portrayed by different actors, I really wanted to do it properly and watch it from the start.

So the two main protagonists in this first series are Detective Marty Hart, played by Woody Harrelson and his new, unlikely partner Detective Rust Cohle, played by Matthew McConaughey. And these two do not like each other much right off the bat, mainly because... due to a back story which we find out a little way into it... Rust is basically a nihilistic, anti-social and somewhat unfeeling (and certainly unsubtle) person. Marty is more of a religious family man but, not above cheating on his wife Maggie, played by the great Michelle Monaghan.

The main story about an investigation of a series of murders involving ritualistic, devil worship style symbols and possible child molestation is told in flashback as part of a look at ten or so years of the partnership between Marty and Rust, before something gets in the way of their abrasive relationship which Marty can’t let go (which, by the way, you will see coming a mile off). The flashback comes from multiple, cross cut narratives around about 20 years later, as each of the two, in turn, are being questioned by police detectives about a new case which resembles their old one. In the original first murder discovered by the detectives and the audience, a naked girl is left for dead, tied to a tree with antlers on her head. The case in their ‘present’ versions also has a posed, naked woman with antlers. At some point towards the last third, Maggie is also brought in and questioned, to add to the narrative. The last two episodes show Rust and Marty reunited in present day, over their own research into the killings, which Marty had thought been put to bed a couple of decades before. 

And this was a brilliant show for a few reasons... one is that the characters are so well built and developed that you really believe in the relationship between them, as they verbally careen off one another. Secondly, the dark nature of the murders and the way it almost feeds Rust and taps into his bleak outlook as he takes work well into the point of obsession, makes for an interesting show. 

Thirdly... and take this as a back handed compliment if you will... I didn’t see where the ending was going. In that, after episode three I was pretty sure where it was going but, it turns out, the story of the show wasn’t nearly as twisted as I was expecting, to be honest. I’d assumed Marty’s wife and two young girls were part of a devil worshipping community that tied directly into the killings but, it seems I was wrong. On the downside, the villain is more like the version of the Green Goblin that Steve Dikto had wanted to give the readers of The Amazing Spider-Man comic book(and which caused him to leave Marvel comics way back when) as opposed to the one that Stan Lee gave us, when it turned out to be someone very known and visible to the readers. Here, the villain of the piece is pretty anonymous and, although Rust does meet him in his investigations decades before, he doesn’t put that together until after the final confrontation with said villain. 

But, yeah, I had a really good time watching this one... partially, perhaps, because I seemed to be able to worryingly identify and relate to Rust rather than the more optimistic Marty character but, hey ho, that’s the way it goes sometimes. I was a little disappointed that one of the main characters I was expecting to die at the end doesn’t but, that sense of slight let down was somewhat tempered with the way in which a central character’s outlook was forever changed by his experiences at the conclusion of the story.

So, yeah... I really liked True Detective Season One and am looking forward to seeing the other three seasons at some point very soon, I hope. This was definitely good television, as far as I’m concerned.