10 Reasons Why Season 2 Of True Detective Is Actually Awesome

Following the hugely popular and critically lauded first season, True Detective Season Two had some very big shoes to fill. Stripped of its main stars - Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson - and its enigmatic New Orleans setting, many were sceptical that writer/creator/producer Nic Pizzolato could match the series' success a second time round.

Unfortunately, those doubts seem to have manifested into some extremely harsh criticism, leaving Pizzolato's gripping tale of police corruption in the fictional city of Vinci, California open to a particularly brutal savaging by audiences and a great number of critics, who - possibly hoping for a straight retread of 2014's Southern Gothic masterpiece - were perhaps a little unprepared for the thematic departures from the original and a little too ready to dismiss Pizzolato as a 'one-season wonder'.

Though it never quite matched the dizzying adrenaline of the original, Season Two proved itself as a more than worthy successor and, in a great many ways, it was actually a superior series. Much of the nihilistic, existentialist philosophising remained intact (albeit a little more subtly) and a plot that twisted and turned more than a Vinci City highway allowed for a far more involving journey, one that earned its major set pieces and kept its audience guessing at every juncture. So much so that, by the end of the penultimate episode, it was still impossible to tell what Pizzolato had in store for the brutally satisfying finale.

So, here are ten reasons why True Detective Season Two was actually awesome...

Having spent the decade since the career high of Dodgeball trying to reclaim some of that success by starring in a seemingly endless stream of lacklustre comedies, Vince Vaughn seemed an odd choice for Pizzolato to pick as one of the central stars of True Detective's second season. Perhaps he hoped to duplicate some of Matthew McConaughey's recent success - he having being another actor who had previously spent many a year in rom-com limbo.

Vaughn, it must be said, lacks much of the gravitas of McConaughey and at first it seemed that he was struggling to convey the various facets of his character - his delivery of some of Frank's half mumbled philosophising was usually monotonous and often far from convincing - his "Never do anything out of hunger. Not even eating." is a line so bad that it wouldn't have looked out of place in the godawful Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez turkey, Gigli. Gobble gobble.

After a while though, something remarkable happened and, along with the other central characters, Vaughn grew into his role and Frank became believable (or, at least as believable as a character in True Detective can be). Soon his monotonous mumblings began to add to the character rather than detract from it and Frank's focused, almost level-headed panic as he struggled to keep his business and his marriage afloat at the expense of his own morality became intriguing; his Machiavellian determination to come out on top and avoid "Managing an Applebees," made his character both utterly deplorable, and sympathetic - something even McConaughey might have overcooked.