The first season is one of the most acclaimed self-contained seasons of TV ever produced, the second season was widely disparaged. Now, four years later, HBO’s crime anthology series “True Detective” returns with Oscar-winning star Mahershala Ali taking on the lead role in the show’s third season.
It has been hoped the new episodes will serve as a return to form, and according to the first reviews of several episodes of the new run it almost does with Ali’s performance highly praised even as the pacing, the storytelling and the way it re-treads over the first season a little aren’t as well-liked. Here’s a sampling of reviews:
“What’s striking about the latest iteration of a show that’s worn its taste for excess proudly, even as the audience recoiled, is its leanness. Tightly directed (in its first episodes by Jeremy Saulnier) and plotted, and with a performance at its center that steers away from calling attention to itself, the new ‘True Detective’ transcends hype and amounts to 2019’s first pleasant small-screen surprise.” – Daniel Daddario, Variety
“Let’s get this out of the way: ‘True Detective’ Season 3 is good. Whether or not you believe the first season to be an untouchable classic or an overrated but well-acted cop show, Nic Pizzolatto’s new episodes are a big step up from a second season as muddled and meaningless as that water stain above Vince Vaughn’s bed.” – Ben Travers, Indiewire
“True Detective arrives for a third installment seeming to have already established its peaks and valleys. As a vehicle for actors and mood, few shows are better, and with Ali front and center, the new season is easy to get interested in, despite a lackluster mystery that may make it a struggle to stay interested.” – Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter
“Pizzolatto remains fascinated with a kind of affronted masculinity, all these noble guys feeling melancholy about the world only they can save. It gets a bit grating. The death of Steve McQueen, icon of manhood, gets brought up a few times in the season premiere. Quoth Don Draper: Jesus, maybe it’s a metaphor.” – Darren Franich, EW
“In many ways, season three feels like season one with the latter’s more idiosyncratic edges sanded off. There are hints of some terrible horror lurking in the heart of Southern rural America…There’s a fascination with how systemic corruption approaches the level of Lovecraftian horror. There are long, philosophical ramblings in cop cars.” – Todd VanDerWerff, Vox
“The main takeaway here is that the third season of True Detective is not quite up to the level of the first, so far, in large part because substantial hunks of its plot come off like a store brand version of the original. It is so much better than the second season, though. So, so much better.” – Brian Grubb, UpRoxx
“Pizzolatto has taken the right lessons from the successes of Season 1 and failures of Season 2 to pen a highly engaging whodunnit, one which borrows heavily from the show’s debut season to great effect.” – Allison Keene, Collider
“The result is a season that, at least in the first two episodes returns largely to the successful formula of the first, in which clever flashbacks and small-town secrets stoke the fires of conspiracy and mysticism.” – Lindsey Romain, Polygon
“The show is good again by almost any measure. It’s a near perfect copy of the show’s first season and creative height. The thing is…what we want out of our television shows has changed quite a bit in five years… as stylish and intriguing as its first season was. It’s also kind of punishingly boring at times.” – Alec Bojalad, Den of Geek
“I can say that Season 3 is marginally better than Season 2, at the very least. But despite a tremendous lead performance from Mahershala Ali, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Season 1, either. More than anything, it feels unnecessary, hitting the same self-consciously grim notes we’ve seen plenty of times before.” – Dave Nemetz, TV Line
The new season of “True Detective” premieres on HBO on January 13th 2019.
