I held off on watching True Detective for many reasons. Foremost was that I knew I wanted to watch it all at once, well, at least the first season, and second, I didn’t have a subscription to HBO Max at the time.
Well, I have that subscription now, True Detective is in or has completed its third season, and I’m all geared up to watch, at the very least, that first season. I just finished watching the first episode of season one as I write this and there’s definitely some things to say.
Character development. When you’ve got two tried and true Hollywood stars who have been able to stay away from the tabloids, for the most part anyways you know some good acting will be involved. With the star power of Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey it can be taken for granted that character development won’t be an issue. Both are competent actors and neither have been typecast so their full range of talents can be put on full display. In fact the first episode has me chomping at the bit to know more of both of these fascinating characters. It’s easy to see why crime dramas proliferate as they try to bring human nature to the big screen and operate on both sides of the plot equation. The good guys and the bad guys. As humans it’s easy for us to identify with other humans and one of the terrible things we as humans do is to be judgemental. Crime dramas allow us to consider both sides of that plot equation and ponder what we’d do if we were the cop, or the bad guy, as the case may be. But most of the time, at least for me, I look at both sides of that equation and eventually one side will fall flat. I have a feeling that won’t be the case with True Detective.
One of the reasons I was so interested in the series were because of the rave reviews True Detective garnered. The other reason was an interesting tale I read by Robert W. Chambers entitled “The Yellow Sign”. I was aware of the “King in Yellow” and “The Yellow Sign” prior to True Detective and all the reviews I’ve read intimated a tie in between True Detective and The Yellow Sign and by this I was truly intrigued. I knew at some point I would need to binge True Detective and that time is now.
I will now start the second episode. I may write a follow up once I’ve completed season one or may just comment on this posting but either way the hook is in and the time is now.
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