True Detective (Season 3)

This third season follows that peculiar formula that defines TD: the first four episodes are boring and then a violent gun battle kills scores of people and the series shifts gears, rocketing to an exciting finish in which grisly crimes involving sex rings are solved - but Season Three changes things up a little with the pace remaining fairly ponderous even after the mid-season gun battle - only natural given this time the plot centres on an aged detective with memory problems.

★★☆☆☆

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True Detective (Season 2)

True Detective Season 2 (DVD

True Detective Season 2 (DVD)

Season 2 centres around the murder of a city planner in California and confirms True Detective as an anthology series about twisted murders committed by masked culprits, investigated by deeply flawed police officers - here, three, all deeply, deeply cracked - who engage in a massive shootout in about episode 5, and like the first season, this one is star-studded (Rachel McAdams, Taylor Kitsch, Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn star), is cinematic, but is let down by the ponderousness of its first four episodes, by its overreaching scope (cults and gay shame and extramarital affairs and adoption and sexual harrassment counselling sessions are just some of the extraneous matters that keep things mindbogglingly busy) and it is also let down by the pure (daytime) soapiness of scenes between Vince Vaughn's Frank, a club owner up to his neck in corruption and crime, and his wife, Jordan, his business partner and wannabe-bearer of his child.

★★★☆☆

True Detective (Season 1)

True Detective Season 1 (DVD)

True Detective Season 1 (DVD)

Two cops, Matthew McConaughey's Rustin "Rusty" Cohle and Woody Harrelson's Martin Hart investigate the ritualistic killing of a prostitute in this gritty eight-episode police procedural that distinguishes itself with its bleak view of human psychology - as bleak as any of its Louisiana backwater crime scenes - and with the false promise of its title: that this has anything to do with pulpy True Detective-style magazines or tells a crime story that is even slightly realistic. 

★★★★☆

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