True Detective Is Not A Game

TRUE DETECTIVE LIVES. AFTER TWO HOTLY debated seasons followed by an extended period of uncertainty, the crime anthology returns to HBO on Jan. 13 for the first time since 2015.

- Judy Berman

During the hiatus, the network recruited some marquee talent to rehabilitate the shaky franchise. Now the show stars Mahershala Ali, who has won awards for his supporting turns in Moonlight and Green Book, in the psychologically rich lead role he deserves. HBO enlisted lowbudget thriller master Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room, Blue Ruin) to direct. And they brought in Deadwood auteur David Milch to assist the show’s creator, Nic Pizzolatto, a first-time showrunner with a bad habit of sounding contentious in interviews.

Those efforts pay offin a solid third season whose structure and style hew close to those of the first. The show is set in a grim Ozark town, populated by white characters who speak a common language of coded racism. Episodes linger on exchanges between Ali’s earnest Detective Wayne Hayes and his partner Roland West (Stephen Dorff). Across three timelines spanning 35 years, Hayes grapples with the case of two missing children.

In that sense, it’s a welcome return to form: before crashing and burning in the California neo-noir of its second season, which for a long time seemed as though it would be the show’s last, True Detective was a smash hit, thanks to the instantly iconic buddy-cop duo of Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, reams of quotable dialogue and awe-inspiring visual acrobatics courtesy of director Cary Joji Fukunaga.

Yet it’s also worth remembering that even that story arc had ultimately failed to satisfy its most vocal viewers. Instead of tying up eight episodes of cryptic clues with a bow, Pizzolatto let loose ends dangle, supplying a quick resolution to his baroque whodunit before concluding on a more philosophical note.