True Detective.

[Kevin D]

As expected, it's very good. Matthew McConaughy has been very good, as expected. It's got an excellent setting and some of McConaughy's musings are impressively written and surprisingly poignant.

[Kevin D]

I know nobody on here will be remotely interested, but Alexandra Daddario was topless in last night's episode.

 

Warning! The following content is NOT WORK SAFE. Click the Show button to reveal.

 

 

 

 

 

[Bobby Hundreds]

Wow they are great.... True detective you say. Im a convert.

[Tj hooker]

Impressive must start watching

 

Sent from my C5303 using Tapatalk

 

 

[Anny Road]

Just caught the first one and it looks top class. M Mcconaughey does his usual overacting (Daniel Day Lewis style) but I have kinda gotten used to it now and he is growing on me as an actor. Hope this pans out as good as it promises.

Tah for the heads up lads.

[Woo]

Pictures do not do it justice: http://player.ooyala.com/iframe.html#pbid=79fab52488bf4a33ae0a73141928157f&ec=B1bHQ4azoKDjEntyirolV-eeCPO_3MS7&docUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mstarz.com%2Farticles%2F25224%2F20140123%2Falexandra-daddario-nude-true-detective-scene-woody-harrelson-goes-viral-watch-starlet-completely-naked-new-hbo-show-twitter-fans-offer-marriage-proposals.htm

 

She is absolutely fucking incredible. Up there with Amelia Clarke and Addison Timlin in the greatest TV nude scenes. CHEBS!

 

Oh, and the first two episodes were very good indeed.

[SammyAftershave]

I feel almost obligated to report that young lady to the authorities. What powerful persuasions she possesses.

[Woo]

After subsequent viewings I've just realised she was drinking spiced rum. A woman truly after my own heart.

[Kevin D]

Took it up another notch in that third episode. Woody Harrelson stepping up and the atmosphere seems to be getting darker and darker. 

[Anny Road]

Took it up another notch in that third episode. Woody Harrelson stepping up and the atmosphere seems to be getting darker and darker. 

Too right. Darker and darker and I really don't know where they are going with this at all. In a good way that is. Tremendous characters, acting superb and brilliant cinematography

Is this a one season job or what? Does anyone know? How many episodes?

 

Just checked Wiki

The series will use an anthology format, with each season featuring a different cast of characters and story. 8 episodes.

[Mendoza]

Watched the first three episodes last night, excellent stuff. McConaughey in particular is fantastic. 

[Alan Sex]

About 20 mins into the first one.

 

Dark, moving slowly, and great.  

 

If I hadn't been bursting for a piss I wouldn't have got up or be typing this.

[Anny Road]

Hope opinions don't count as spoilers because I don't know anything about the ending.

But don't read if you have only watched the 1st.

Can't do nsfw tags

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I do think one of the detectives is murdering girls. We are lead to believe it is McConaughey because he obviously has issues but I think It's Woody. He has shown little interest in solving the case. All the leg work has been done by his partner and he is the only one that has shown aggressive traits. I think McConaughey knows its him but walked away.

[Sweeney287]

I know nobody on here will be remotely interested, but Alexandra Daddario was topless in last night's episode.

 

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Was waiting keenly for this to start on Sky but those pictures have made it a must viewing.

Superb norks.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

Pictures do not do it justice: http://player.ooyala.com/iframe.html#pbid=79fab52488bf4a33ae0a73141928157f&ec=B1bHQ4azoKDjEntyirolV-eeCPO_3MS7&docUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mstarz.com%2Farticles%2F25224%2F20140123%2Falexandra-daddario-nude-true-detective-scene-woody-harrelson-goes-viral-watch-starlet-completely-naked-new-hbo-show-twitter-fans-offer-marriage-proposals.htm

 

She is absolutely fucking incredible. Up there with Amelia Clarke and Addison Timlin in the greatest TV nude scenes. CHEBS!

 

Oh, and the first two episodes were very good indeed.

As correct as you are Alex, you still haven't completed your review for this years Secret Santa. You are receiving 1-2 negs a day until you do.

[Anubis]

What happens in the end is.....

 

 

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Why the fuck are you looking at this? What? You want to spoil it for yourself?  What kind of fucking retard would do that?

 

[Dr Nowt]

Seen this advertised on Sky Atlantic as starting soon.

 

Where is everyone watching it in the meanwhile?

 

Likewise with other US shows, and US boxing?

 

What about guns? When do we get guns?

[Kevin D]

Only 4 episodes, but this is already one of TV's elite shows. A wild, Training dayesque last 20 minutes.

[Mendoza]

This show is the dog's bollocks. 

[Kevin D]

 

 

 

 

[Dr Nowt]

He should post on here.

[polymerpunkah]

All sorts of things happening, but the pacing is still excellent.

 

Really enjoying this one.

[Elite]

It's fantastic. I have never been much of a Woody Harrelson fan because he usually plays quirky roles but he's brilliant in this and I much prefer him in serious roles. McConaughey is awesome as usual, probably my favourite actor now, just edging Leo.

 

I hope they continue to pick up the pace now after the last episode, that last 20mins as Kevin D said, was superb.

[Kevin D]

Concerned that we may have a high-level government conspiracy or powerful cabal ending, which would be really disappointing, but they don't seem to have too many other places they could go. It's been world-class stuff, so far, so hopefully that shit doesn't happen.

[Kevin D]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/southern-discomfort-is-true-detective-starring-woody-harrelson-and-matthew-mcconaughey-the-best-us-detective-show-since-the-wire-9136919.html

 

 

 

Every now and then a television programme arrives so fully formed and confident that the only response is to gasp in pleasure and applaud. Crime thriller True Detective, which starts on Sky Atlantic on Saturday, is one such show.

 

 

The case itself – a naked girl with antlers on her head posed like a ritual sacrifice with a “devil catcher” swaying gently in the breeze above – is the sort of unpleasant shocker that’s increasingly in vogue (is it too much to hope that one day the central murder will involve something other than the degraded, naked body of a young woman?) but what’s interesting is what writer Nic Pizzolatto and director Cary Fukunaga do with their tale.

 

 

Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as Hart and Cohle

 

 

“I think the strangeness of it is what attracted Woody and Matthew,” admits Pizzolatto, a  38-year-old novelist and academic whose only previous television experience was writing for the US remake of The Killing. “I was very  conscious that I didn’t want it to be a traditional thriller – I know some people might initially be put off by that but I hope they’ll find that the story comes to make sense. It’s actually a very neat narrative, very precise.”

 

 

Thus, True Detective is not a straightforward story of the hunt for a serial killer but a study of damnation and the slow fall from grace told over eight tense episodes (if the show returns for a second season it will be with a different cast and setting). Pizzolatto has “literally no interest in serial killers… no interest in trying to shock or gross people out with portrayals of gore”. Instead, he’s fascinated by the lies people tell, both to others, and, more crucially, to themselves. “Illusions and what they cost us is one of the governing themes of the show,” he says. “Both the lead characters have illusions and neither knows how to live well, for different reasons. This is not an ensemble show so much as a two-hander focusing on these men and their relationship.”

 

 

It helps that the two lead performances are outstanding. As the confident Hart, Harrelson is all good ole boy charm, until the mask  slips and you see something of the coward who lurks within, meanwhile McConaughey, Hollywood’s man of the moment, Oscar-nominated for Dallas Buyers Club, continues his mid-life career revival with an astonishing performance as Cohle.

 

 

In the 1995 scenes Cohle is merely odd. Part-time philosopher and full-time obsessive with a past so lurid a penny-dreadful writer would think twice before scribbling it down, by 2012 he’s burnt out and wasted, living on life’s margins and resigned to his fate, yet still  possessing enough ruined intelligence to make you wonder just what went wrong. 

 

 

Matthew McConaughey as Rustin Cohle in True Detective

Many actors would find it impossible not to overplay Cohle.McConaughey’s strength, like that of the equally laid-back Robert Mitchum, lies in his stillness. That’s not to say True Detective, which pulled in 2.3 million viewers in America (HBO’s best for a new show since 2010) and draws more praise with each episode (US critics recently hailed the climax to the fourth episode as “astonishing”) is perfect.

 

 

As is too often the case with this type of drama the female characters are pretty much mothers, whores and the mothers of whores. Michelle Monaghan tries hard to make an impression in a largely thankless role as Hart’s wife. Pizzolatto, whose atmospheric first novel, Galveston, suggests he can write a well-rounded female character, insists her role increases in importance as the series progresses.

 

 

Pizzolatto and Fukunaga seem intent on throwing the rulebook away, creating something that’s closer in feel to a James Lee Burke novel than a standard television thriller. Their level of control – unusually for a US drama every episode is written by Pizzolatto and directed by Fukunaga – allows them to take a number of risks from long monologues about seemingly tangential subjects to the almost dreamlike pacing, Fukunaga’s camera drifting over the Louisiana landscape, the children hanging out on their bikes, the boarded-up houses, the roads seemingly heading nowhere.

 

 

It’s a bleak, hardscrabble world leavened only by the odd moment of dark humour. Most importantly, like David Simon with The Wire, Pizzolatto has created a world that is instantly, utterly his. Atmospheric (the haunting soundtrack comes from country master T Bone  Burnett), disturbing and occasionally so pretentious it hurts,True Detective is like nothing else on television right now.

‘True Detective’ starts on Saturday 22 January at 9pm on Sky Atlantic