Critic Reviews

The acting--by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson--is off the charts. The writing and the concept, by series creator and novelist Nic Pizzolatto, undulates from effectively brash soliloquies to penetratingly nuanced moments carried by sparse prose. Lastly, director Cary Joji Fukunaga has created a beautiful, sprawling sense of place (the series is shot and set in Louisiana).

Each season of this anthology drama tells a new story with a new cast, but McConaughey and Harrelson are so good, you immediately begin grieving the prospect of getting only eight episodes with them. [10 Jan 2013, p.67]

Rich and absorbing, this eight-part drama quickly vaults into elite company, offering a singular voice that’s unlike almost anything else on TV.

Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson should star in everything, always--that’s how mesmerizing they are as Louisiana criminal investigators in HBO’s new anthology True Detective.

The two central performances are so powerful, the dialogue so evocative, the look so intense, that they speak to the value of the hybrid anthology format Pizzolatto is using here--which, along with FX’s “American Horror Story,” points to a potentially fascinating shift in dramatic series television.

Creepy, gorgeous, unsettling, and searching, it has--for lack of a better word--a literary quality, an accretion of meaningful detail. You can push on any aspect of the show--every line, every shot, every bruise--and it bears up.

[Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey's] riveting work would be worth the admission alone, but the hauntingly beautiful True Detective excels in every way.

The dialogue is rich, colorful and provocative, adding to the gothic sensibilities of the series. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga makes great use of the Louisiana location, giving it as much importance to the story as the characters of Cohle and Hart. All the performances are superb, but those of McConaughey and Harrelson are in a class by themselves.

The drama unfolds in a series of flashbacks separated by many years. Hart and Cohle, no longer young, end up reporting on the past in separate interviews—a formula carried off with subtlety and high intelligence, like everything else in this detective story.

While it's not fun entertainment (lacking the tragicomic notes of, say, "The Sopranos"), it is an amazing dramatic entry. It's only January, and only four episodes were available for review, but True Detective sets the bar for 2014's TV newcomers.