True Detective

The landscape in deep Louisiana is unforgiving.

Empty highways criss-cross the state. Forests harbor dark secrets. Distant, dying factories dot the horizon. Dead trees stand silent beside lonely roads.

In the middle of cane fields Detectives Rustin Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson) make a grim discovery of a dead young girl, naked and bound, with deer antlers on her head and strange marking on her body. She is clearly what remains from some sort of bizarre ritual.

Welcome to True Detective where the year is 1995 and Cohle, who has transferred from Texas, is partnered with Hart. But despite their common goal these two are polar opposites. Cohle is a lone-wolf who believes in nothing. Known amongst the police as “the taxman” he makes comprehensive notes and pencil drawings at crime scenes, keeping lengthy files and frequently mumbling his own philosophies.

Hart is a family man and realist. He barely tolerates his partner, save for his respect for his policing skills. Despite his pragmatism, he isn’t without his flaws.

This new HBO drama created by Nic Pizzolatto, is also an anthology series. While it is planned to have other cast members and stories for its second season, the first centres around the hunt for a serial killer.

Adding to the dense style of the narrative is a concurrent storyline set in 2012.

Here we find a dishevelled Cohle, looking nothing like his 1995 self, and Hart being interviewed separately by two other police.

Much of the series involves them recalling the 1995 murder and the steps they took to resolve it. That includes deep personal admissions about their partnership. Indeed, for reasons unexplained, Detective Maynard Gilbough (Michael Potts) and Detective Thomas Papania (Tory Kittles) seem more interested in Cohle and Hart than they are in the initial crime. What is clear is that there are unhealed wounds between the two…

Amid the procedural and the character essay lays some unsettling scenes and dazzling performances.

A lean and trim McConaughey is rivetting as the silent Cohle. When he starts mumbling about living in a town that’s like someone’s faded memory, you could be forgiven for thinking he had wandered off a David Lynch set. Cohle is so at odds with the conventional methods of the Louisiana force he risks becoming a liability to the case. Supervising officer Major Ken Quesada (Kevin Dunn) is unimpressed with his rudeness and close to firing him.

But it’s the tension with Hart that drives this series. Harrelson is excellent as the short-tempered, flawed father of 2 who is just inches away from an all-in brawl with Cohle. This tug of war will surely rip them apart.

Faith also plays a big part of True Detective. The stench of corruption, prostitution and poverty reeks beneath a veneer of fundamentalist Biblical movements. And beware the occult…

True Detective is brimming in sub-text and mystery. In this golden age of drama it perfectly upholds HBO’s reputation for captivating dramas  -who knew something so good would be upon us just two weeks into the new year?

But be warned, it is languid in style, almost like a Deep South response to The Killing. Director Cary Fukunaga guides with a masterful hand on this Louisiana canvas. It’s also the first drama of 2014 to pack a punch, if only for the performance of Matthew McConaughey.

Don’t miss it.

True Detective premieres 6:30pm Monday  on Showcase.