True Detective

When The Rolling Stone starts a list entitled €61 Reasons to Love 2014? with a mention of True Detective whilst my Facebook feed simultaneously turns into an ongoing post-show debate about it, I have no choice but to pay attention. So I did, and by gum did I do right. Let us premise with the fact that Woody Harrelson and Matthew ?Can Do No Wrong? McConaughey are the two main chaps in the drama. Let us add to this the fact that it is a drama in the style of a Southern Gothic, combining all the latent tensions, backwater sexism, sweat and cigarettes that we find impossible to resist. Armed with the facts you can now sink deep into what is unquestionably one of the best shows you will see this year – this is top-class, cat’s pajamas, eel’s eyebrows of television.

McConaughey plays odd-ball Rust to Harrelson’s square-jawed and solid Marty, in one of the best crime twosomes ever created. Rust’s lines provide the lyrical element to the series, as he describes the earth as ?gutter in outer space?, like a Camus of the American South. Every bit of True Detective tickles the sinister underbelly of humanity. From the cases they cover, to their outlook on life, to the Godless no man’s land Louisiana forms, it’s all what Rust would call ?in philosophical terms, [pessimism]? But pessimism in the style of punk rock – subversive and superbly stylish. Start catching up, as last audience rating put it at over 2 million views in the US alone. Don’t get caught out in the cold.

Roisin Agnew @Roxeenna