Pizzolatto doubles down on much of what made the first season so distinctive. The only remnant of the first season is the dark imagination of its creator and writer, Nic Pizzolatto.

“True Detective” is an anthology series, so this story has new characters in a new setting. But overall the series was dazzling: the performances, dialogue, narrative style and cinematography reached the highest levels of the genre. The first season had weaknesses - it was slow, at times insufferably pretentious, and the resolution of the crime was silly. HBO’s “ True Detective” returns on Sunday with high expectations.

That’s certainly arguable, though in fairness, the compliment should go both ways - Balzac, Dickens and Trollope are the showrunners of the written word.īut what’s hard to dispute is that second seasons, like second novels, can easily disappoint. There are plenty of people who insist that auteur-driven television series like “True Detective” are the 19th-century novels of the visual age.

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