I Watch TV: True Detective Season 3
One of the things that lifted the first season of True Detective from being merely an excellently designed crime series was that the flirtation with the supernatural offered the suggestion that anything can happen, and that the stakes were existentially high. That they also meshed perfectly with the themes of a (using the term both as a genre and as a style) gothic mystery while plundering little known back waters of gothic, horror and weird fiction gave it a depth and texture unmatched by other TV shows.
It also had an ending, and we knew that and trusted that it would work towards it.
The second season was a perfectly fine California Noir mystery, but there’s no corner of noir that hasn’t been mined out and True Detective is not about re-contextualising or de-constructing on even innovating especially. So this outstanding show turned out a good noir story and we were... disappointed.
Finally, the new season. This takes the multiple time-line structure of the first season and ups it; Detective Hayes, now retired, has memory problems. He is an unreliable narrator to himself.
This gives back this stance of being unsure what will happen, or even what genre we’re in. And this puts Season 3 on track, making it compelling television. When it nods to continuity with the other seasons it's only nodding, but our lack of certainty keeps us watching to see what it will offer.
Also, unlike the nihilism of deepest noir, where the real villains can never be brought to justice though, perhaps, one villain might take the fall, we get an actual happy ending. Yes, even though there’s doubt, and there has been lies, betrayal, murder and horror along the way. It’s happy.
Watch This: Probably the best crime on TV, with some sly and dark humour where the very-woke True Crime investigator’s questions about power structures are dismissed by the old boys, only to be put on screen in the past sections
Don’t Watch This: Because there is child abuse and horror and you don’t want that
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