True Detective Season 2: 5 Awesome Moments (And 5 That Sucked)

Season one was a deeply serious show, but what perforated that, and what probably made its depictions of rape, child abuse and shocking, heinous violence more accessible (and easier to stomach) to a mainstream audience, was the humour; the little pockets of fun that popped up when ever things were getting too damn dark. Naturally, most of this came from the buddy-cop pairing of Rust and Marty, whose binary oppositions spoke to the viewer more suited to the classical conventions of the cops-and-killers genre. 

But here, nothing: barely a smile registered by four main leads across eight episodes and nearly nine hours. It's hard to get behind a show so hopelessly serious, and even harder to get behind one often serious only for seriousness' sake. Even the darkest TV shows (The Sopranos, Deadwood, Breaking Bad) have  humour to them, and they are often laugh-out-loud funny.

True detective Mk: II is not one of these shows, however, and in negating the inherent hilarity and absurdity of life, it loses something vital in the process: Heart.