True Detective Season 3: 8 Ways To Fix The Show

6. A Different Mystery

Hands up who really cared about who killed Caspere? One person at the back, oh, no, just scratching your head. Which is something we were all left doing as this mystery unfolded, or didn't, over the course of eight episodes. The initial setup was good; there was a weird, gruesome murder, and it brought all of the leads together. And then the show basically just forgot about it, only reviving it for the last couple of episodes, and then the killers were the most obvious ones (if you'd managed to follow who anyone was, anyway).

You can argue it's more about the characters, but the central mystery that links those characters still needs to keep you interested. In basic terms it followed the similar pattern to season 1, and a number of other detective stories, in that there was only the one main murder, which served as the catalyst for the entire series. It's fine if done well, but what may be the best move now is to do something different.

Something like a serial killer, that they follow throughout the series, might be the best way to shake things up a bit, and of course it doesn't even need to be a murder. We've seen Broadchurch bounce back with its third season focused on a sexual assault case, and maybe True Detective could get away from murder mystery to really freshen things up. As long as there's a captivating mystery, something directly related to the case happening each week, and some proper sleuthing from the leads, then people are going to be more invested in it.