TV Review: True Detective

Don’t trust reviewers. That’s the conclusion I reached, but always really knew, after making the mistake of reading a few articles about the second season of HBO’s True Detective, which made its debut on Sunday, June 21. Devising a new story and location for the second season, True Detective tells of the crime that links a gangster on the make for legitimacy (Vince Vaughn), an angry county sheriff (Rachel McAdams), a suspended highway motorcycle patrolman (Taylor Kitsch), and a city detective (Colin Farrell) in the pocket of the gangster. They are all also linked by various sexual inadequacies: the detective is asexual after his wife was raped, and left him; the gangster is infertile; the patrolman is impotent; the sheriff has sexual tastes that conflict with what she advises her wayward sister and her New Age guru dad. The setting is California and its cobwebs of busy highways, its sleepless industrial warrens, and its dried out landscapes, whose corruptions have leeched into the social fabric. The first episode, of eight, gave us the crime, supplied thumbnail sketches of the players, and brought them all together in the end. It looks to be a terrific, gritty, engrossing, multi-layered series that will require an attentive viewer.

You wouldn’t know that from the New York Times, Variety, or New York magazine, among other institutions that provided advance reviews. The uniformity of their complaints read as if they had all gotten together beforehand to bring down a highfalutin’ show in its sophomore year. Collectively, their complaints came down to humorlessness (not true; the show has wit and some jokes), unpleasant characters (these are troubled, human characters whom we’ve only seen for an hour so far), actors “uncomfortable” in their roles (again, not true; Rachel McAdams is convincing and revelatory as a conflicted cop, and Vince Vaughn is terrific as a criminal who may be the nicest, most compassionate of the characters – though there are seven more episodes to go), and that it’s not as good as the first season (which, they all quickly add, wasn’t as good as everyone said it was, according to these suddenly revisionist writers).

Don’t believe them. In terms of helpful assessments of the show as it plays out, the viewer is encouraged to read, not the reviews, but the talkbacks by readers, where helpful researchers track the show’s numerous allusions and cultural references. True Detective is a good show so far, trafficking in adult material and a grim (honest?) view of life that can make you uneasy. It’s a neo-noir, or film soleil, set in a world of shifting morals much more opaque than in traditional film noir mysteries, or even contemporary crime novels, a sun-soaked terrain that miraculously exposes the grungy sides of greed and desire.