The Sound and Fury of HBO's True Detective

In the midst of the hostage situation that provides True Detective's most intense scene so far, a neo-Nazi meth cook mumbles that "time is a flat circle". This line is repeated throughout the fifth episode of HBO's new eight-part drama series: an oblique, possibly meaningless allusion in a television show full of them. Whether these references prove to be vital in resolving True Detective's original murder mystery seems almost besides the point, as these scattered philosophies and half-truths combine to contribute a mythic and menacing undertone to the outstanding new series.

Detectives Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Cohle (Matthew McConaughey)

True Detective is a show which is founded upon uncertainties, with the plot unfolding across two timelines and with unreliable narrators. Former Louisiana State Police Detectives Rustin "Rust" Cohle and Martin Hart recount a 1995 murder investigation to two younger police officers in the present day, who seem just as interested in their predecessors as the murder investigation. Just as in shows such as Twin Peaks and The Killing, the murder mystery itself often feels secondary to the study of the central characters. Indeed, the string of murders depicted throughout the series frequently seem to be the pretext creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto needs to examine the morality of Cohle, Hart and of the Deep South itself.

The Louisiana presented in True Detective is a poverty-riven wasteland of swamps and trailer parks, populated by an assortment of right-wing biker gangs, prostitutes, and evangelical Christians. Detective Cohle, himself a Texan, spits that his and Hart's new beat is more like "someone's memory of a town, and the memory is fading". The two detectives spend much of the early episodes tramping through swamps, abandoned schools, and dilapidated churches as they search for leads in their investigation into a murder with occult overtones. In these opening episodes, the wretched Louisiana landscape builds an eerie tone which is reinforced by a number of literary references.

True Detective's desolate Louisiana landscape

Pizzolatto, who convinced HBO to forego a team of writers and grant him full creative control over the series, is himself a Louisiana native who was previously an assistant professor of literature at DePauw University, so is sure to be familiar with the Southern Gothic tradition. This literary tradition, which birthed the likes of Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy, is soon brought to mind by the string of grizzly roadside murders depicted throughout the series. The serial killer pursued by Cohle and Hart, meanwhile, is frequently referred to as "The Yellow King". It has been noted that this may refer to The King in Yellow, Robert W Chambers' 1895 short story collection which comprises a number of stories featuring a meta-fictional play of the same name: a play that kills anyone who views it. Furthermore, the stories in Chambers' collection are all set in the cursed city of Carcosa, which bears resemblance to the miserable Louisiana portrayed in the series. The parallels between Chambers' Carcosa and True Detective's Louisiana are made explicit when one murder suspect warns the detectives "you're in Carcosa now, the black star is rising".
       

Reggie Ledoux (left) speaks of Carcosa in episode five

This sense of impending doom is developed further by the series' undoubted star, Matthew McConaughey, who turns in a performance of taciturn brilliance as the nihilistic Detective Cohle. McConaughey, who has enjoyed a mid-career renaissance playing Southern oddballs, brings a glazed-eyed intensity to Cohle, the maverick former undercover narcotics agent transferred to the State Police's homicide team. Cohle, although a genial investigator, engulfs his colleagues in an existential despair as he observes that humans "labor under the illusion of having a self". It is testament to the calibre of McConaughey's performance that Cohle's philosophising and his various contradictions - his meticulous note-taking sees him nicknamed "taxman" but he is also an alcoholic - never undermine the character's credibility.

His partner, Woody Harrelson's Detective Hart, at first seems to function as light relief from Cohle, in one instance warning his colleague that "the car is to be a place of silent reflection", after another of Cohle's misanthropic rants. However, while Hart seems like the stable family man to Cohle's hateful bachelor at the outset, the cracks in his facade are gradually revealed throughout the series. Harrelson is excellent as the patriarch trying to keep a lid on his wildest desires, once growling "I'm not a psycho" through gritted teeth, having just thrown someone through a wardrobe. Harrelson has great on-screen chemistry with McConaughey, and it makes for captivating viewing as the egos of their respective characters clash and occasionally co-operate throughout the investigation.

McConaughey's Cohle makes for an unreliable narrator as he recounts the investigation

Along with excellent performances from the cast, with Michelle Monaghan meriting a mention for her portrayal of Hart's wife, True Detective also includes a number of stunning action sequences. The six-minute, one-take chase through a neighbourhood engulfed in a gang shoot-out which concludes the fourth episode has already earned deserved plaudits. The scene, filmed in one continuous tracking shot and soundtracked by Wu-Tang Clan and police helicopters, arrives as a exhilarating surprise in a series which until that point develops slowly. The "big throw-down in the woods", meanwhile, which is discussed from the first episode, is even richer in tension and shocks. These set-pieces, cinematic in their scope and intensity, allow the series to take on a tone akin to Training Day re-written by William Faulkner.

The show's impressive pacing, meanwhile, can be attributed to the fact that True Detective will be broadcast in an anthology format, with each series set to feature a new cast and storyline. As such, viewers will be spared the meandering progress of interminable modern-day TV epics such as Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, whereby shows inevitably lose momentum after a brilliant first series. This eight-episode format is double-edged, however, as viewers of True Detective will be forgiven for not wanting the final three episodes of this captivating new drama to end.