So, one of the most talked-about shows on television has returned for 2019, and while the format and style remain somewhat similar, the personalities onscreen are different, promising that much sought-after combination of reliability and renewed curiosity. But, hey, what more would you expect from I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, right?
Yeah, that bit never gets old.
No, this is TV Guy’d, and competitive reality television is not really our beat here. Instead, let’s cast our gaze upon the third season of HBO’s True Detective, returning this week to Foxtel station Fox Showcase. And because this is True Detective we’re talking about, that gaze is likely to be unabashedly male. That’s the show’s brand for ya – men with deep thoughts and feelings (the feelings often buried so deep it requires heavy equipment to excavate them), dedication to doing the job and, of course, demons. (Personal, not supernatural.)
Based on its trailers and marketing, this new season of the series came across before its premiere as a return to first-season form – or perhaps a return to first-season formula – after a second season that could charitably be described as an ambitious departure and less charitably described as a total fucking misfire. (Personally speaking, I’m down with True 2 – it’s a sprawling, sweaty LA crime saga in the James Ellroy vein, with stylistic touches reminiscent of coked-up ‘80s-era William Friedkin and Brian De Palma, and has a memorably fucked-up protagonist in Colin Farrell’s Ray Velcoro.)
Like the first season, which helped launched Matthew’s McConaissance and gave a high-profile platform to the directorial skills of Cary Joji Fukunaga, this new mystery is a miasma of semi-rural decay and desolation complete with missing persons (two pre-teen kids this time around), cops waxing philosophical while cruising the highways, multiple timelines, dropped clues hinting at all manner of secret, sordid behaviour, interrogations both official and unofficial and, naturally, creepy shrines at crime scenes.
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Same shit, different Detective, you might say. But while this season isn’t rewriting the playbook – and is indeed revisiting the playbook in main respects – it wasn’t long before I found myself drawn in nonetheless. Even if it’s the same old song, it’s still got an infectious, catchy beat.
For all his faults (and, oh, he has some), screenwriter/series creator Nic Pizzolatto has a real aptitude for layering intrigue upon intrigue through tricky chronological moves and story swerves both dramatic and subtle. He’s able to keep viewers on their toes by generating an overall air of distrust and unreliability, with the subjective ways various characters view an incident or a person proving to be gradually, inexorably gripping – will the truth be revealed, and what kind of twisted path must we take to uncover it? (Pizzolatto’s yen for 80-proof dialogue remains intact too: a line like “I remember it as the day Steve McQueen died” indicates our boy is either utterly lacking in self-awareness or thoroughly committed to his bit.)
Our hero this time around is Arkansas state police officer Wayne Hays (Moonlight’s Mahershala Ali), who’s investigating the case of the missing children – a brother and sister – in 1980, recalling the particulars of the investigation while being questioned by superiors in 1990 and once again dredging up the details in 2015, this time as a retired, elderly widower struggling with a rapidly fading memory while being interviewed by a TV journalist (her show is titled ‘True Criminal’ – wink wink).
Hays isn’t as instantly compelling as McConaughey’s verbose, nihilistic True Detective character Rust Cohle, although Oscar winner Ali does a fantastic job of fleshing him out without being demonstrative about it – he uses his innate calm and command of the screen to centre things, only gradually showing the stress points and fault lines. And he brings great stuff out of the actors alongside him. Anyone with any taste knows Carmen Ejogo is always worth watching (if you haven’t seen her in season two of The Girlfriend Experience, remedy that quick-smart) but she’s marvellous here as Hays’ wife, a teacher who writes a book about the missing children and soon becomes regarded as the authority on the case, to Hays’ consternation. And ‘90s boy Stephen Dorff – an actor Hollywood seems hellbent on making happen every few years – has a sturdy, second-string presence as Hays’ partner.
The pilot episode of True Detective’s new season is directed by Jeremy Saulnier – who apparently butted heads with Pizzolatto and jumped or was pushed from the production, with other directors, including Pizzolatto himself, handling the bulk of the remaining episodes – and the helmer of Green Room and Hold the Dark brings his knack for the slow burn to his establishment of the case, the characters and the milieu. He’s a tremendously patient director, Saulnier, and he cagily draws you into True Detective’s web so well that you may find yourself eager for the next episode before you even realise you’re snared.
