10 Best Episodes Of True Detective

The Long Bright Dark, the first episode of True Detective (TD), is a practically flawless, perfect example of a television pilot. It had to set the tone, establish characters and introduce us to the TD universe in less than one hour, igniting curiosity and posing burning questions. Little did we know exactly what we were in for...

A ritualistic murder pushes detectives Cohle and Hart together down a long, dark path that will come to not only change but also shape the direction of their lives forever. Taking influence from The Silence Of The Lambs to Gillian Flynn, Shirley Jackson and Donna Tart literature, the tone of TD is grave, complex and verging on the intellectual. The long reaching, endless and seemingly deserted bayous of Louisiana, the occult murder of a prostitute, we've been here before, just not like this.

Cohle introduces us to the philosophical concepts of pessimism and nihilism, which are used to great effect throughout to illustrate the futility of existence and meaninglessness of death, in his world. Broken by the death of his daughter and the subsequent collapse of his marriage, he is principled but on a path of self-destruction.

Hart’s story is a simpler one: years of alcoholism and marital neglect have given him a practiced apathy to his job, something he is forced to address after five minutes on the job with Cohle. This is the beginning of a profound twenty year relationship, equally both destructive and redemptive in its nature and utterly absorbing to watch.