There’s a fucking hole, man.
There’s a massive fucking hole.
Ever since the end of September last year, when Breaking Bad ended, there’s been a cable chasm, not helped by the periodic discovery of the show by friends, family and co-workers who dive straight into all 62 episodes and shout “Heisenberg, woah!” every time you see them as if they don’t know how much it hurts.
But this isn’t a love letter to a departed obsession; this feels like the start of something new and its name is True Detective.
It’s not instantly gripping in the same way that the first six episodes of Breaking Bad languish and slowly drip into your brain, gently gnawing at you until you’ve watched enough to break the back of it and you’re halfway to hell. It’s not instantly gratifying, perhaps more similar to how you didn’t understand a word of what was going on in The Wire until at least a few hours in.
The difference from that show is that the expectations were immediately high with HBO’s latest Sunday night loveletter. It may have been written and produced by Nic Pizzolatto, a relatively young Louisiana novelist rather than Aaron Sorkin or Lena Dunham or Martin Scorsese, but as soon as HBO paired up Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, you expected something different. THIS wasn’t going to be just a crime drama, THIS had to special.
The synopsis is simple; McConaughey and Harrelson play a pair of cops investigating a Blairwitch Project-style murder in the deep bayous of Louisiana in 1995. The show switches between the investigation and the present day where the pair — seemingly no longer cops — are being questioned by another set of police officers.
McConaughey and Harrelson are perfectly paired; the blue line equivalent of Johnny and June, or the drawling Southern counterparts to Dragnet’s Joe Friday and Pep Streebek.
Although they’ve only ever appeared together twice (in EDtv and Willie Nelson passion project Surfer Dude) it seems natural; it seems like they’ve been friends for years who still occasionally hang out and smoke weed together.
Harrelson — as Martin Hart — is good. He is a versatile but slightly fucked up everyman (“a regular dude with a big-ass dick”), albeit one with a slight secret and one that has long surpassed being the idiot barman in Cheers.
True Detective, is the zenith of The McConaissance, a remarkable turn around from the man totty of How To Lose A Guy In Ten Day and J-Lo fairytale The Wedding Planner to a chicken fucking psychopath in Killer Joe and Aids-ravaged entrepreneur in Dallas Buyers Club. McConaughey plays Rust Cohle: initially a thorough but socially awkward cop nicknamed The Taxman, but presented in current day as a booze-swilling cantankerous swine who looks like a cross between the king of guy looking for truck stop tricks and a a member of Swedish death metal band Entombed.
“It’s Thursday and it’s past noon. Thursday is one of my days off. On my days off I start drinking at noon. You don’t get to interrupt that.”
True Detective is dark and bleak and eerie, helped in large part by cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, who previously worked on Jane Campion murder tale Top of the Lake and director Cary Fukunaga.
The limited nature of the show — McConaughey and Harrelson are only signed up for eight episodes and one case — adds to the authenticity and mythology.
The show reeks of authentic southern gothic and is essentially an American Horror Story for people who prefer real-life, antler-fondling serial killers over ghosts, and in particular, gimp ghosts.
Email me when Peter White publishes or recommends stories