TV Review: Cop show as character study

McConaughey shines as a world-weary sleuth in HBO’s “True Detective”

It’s way too early to call HBO’s “True Detective” one of the best shows on television, but the first episode sure tempts the sentiment. On first glance it could be mistaken for another overwrought cop-versus-killer mystery. Instead, writer/creator Nic Pizzolatto and director Cary Fukunaga – the former a novelist and the latter a filmmaker, both new to television – avoid the plot-heavy conventions of the genre, focusing instead on the internal malaise of Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle, a weary, alcoholic detective whose brilliance at his job belies a passive contempt for humanity, and his uneasy relationship with his partner, Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson, delivering a rare straight-man performance). The show takes place in southern Louisiana, where it was also filmed, and Fukunaga (“Jane Eyre”) shoots the landscape as a purgatory of de-saturated grays and browns.

The plot is framed as a story-within-a-story, with two timelines: In 2012, Hart and Cohle, both retired from police work, are interviewed separately by detectives about a gruesome murder case the two worked together 17 years prior. McConaughey is haggard, unkempt, wild-eyed, defeated by life, seething. When we move to 1995, where the bulk of the first episode takes place, we see him as a different man – isolated, aloof, but not broken. He fights his alcoholism and grieves the loss of his daughter and his marriage.

Cohle and Hart’s partnership is contentious. Hart is a family man with a wife (Michelle Monaghan) and two young daughters, a Christian who knows his community well. The cloud that hangs over Cohle confounds him. One of the best scenes in the episode which aired Jan. 12 shows Hart as he questions Cohle about his spiritual beliefs after just leaving the scene of a grisly murder. 

“I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution,” Cohle responds. “We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand-in-hand into extinction.”

“So what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning?” Hart asks.

“I tell myself I bear witness. But the real answer is it’s obviously my programming, and I lack the constitution for suicide.”
Cohle is full of these existential pronouncements. Coming from a lesser actor, it’d smell like indulgent overwriting. But McConaughey sells it with conviction, and Pizzolatto gives us Hart as an audience surrogate. “You asked,” as Cohle says, to which Hart responds, “Yeah, but now I’m begging you to shut the fuck up.”

McConaughey is astounding. Much has been made of his redemption as a serious actor after a decade in rom-com hell, and with good reason. The same night “True Detective” premiered, he accepted the Golden Globe for Best Actor for his performance in “Dallas Buyers Club,” and he’s got an excellent shot to win the Oscar next month. He starred in “Mud” last year (if you haven’t seen it, rent it immediately) and had a role in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” To call “True Detective” a victory lap would undersell just how good he is.

The only disappointing thing about “True Detective” is knowing that after this first eight-episode season, McConaughey and Harrelson will be gone. Pizzolatto created the show as an anthology (think “American Horror Story”) and said each season will stand alone, complete with a different cast and characters. The storytelling possibilities are intriguing, but after one episode I’m already bracing myself for the long goodbye to Cohle and Hart.