On TV This Week: 'Babylon' Has Good Fun, 'Detective' Is The Real Deal
Two new miniseries this week are worth special mention — and couldn't be more different.
True Detective, which begins Sunday on HBO, is a combination series and miniseries, kind of like American Horror Story on FX. Each season is designed to tell a different, self-contained story, followed the next year by a new tale with new characters and sometimes even new actors. This first season of True Detective is an eight-hour murder mystery starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, neither of whom is expected to return next season.
Catch them while you can, because this first salvo of True Detective is riveting. My, what a narrative — and what performances. Just after saying goodbye to Treme, HBO presents another complicated drama series set in Louisiana. Novelist Nic Pizzolatto has written all eight episodes, and Cary Joji Fukunaga has directed them all, so there's a strong unity of vision. The closest things I've seen to True Detective on TV are Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire, which I intend as the highest kind of praise.
Harrelson plays Martin Hart, a respected detective born and raised in Louisiana. McConaughey plays Rust Cohle, a former undercover cop from Texas with a tragic past and an even more tragic world view. Within weeks of being assigned to each other as partners, Hart and Cohle catch a gruesome, ritualistic murder: a young woman found dead in the woods, tied to a tree, posed unnaturally, draped with a crown made of antlers.
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