True Detec­tive Sea­son 3 review – Maher­sha­la Ali shines as win­ning for­mu­la returns

Wwhile 2014’s first sea­son of True Detec­tive was a crit­i­cal dar­ling, 2015’s fol­low-up was viewed far less favourably. A cast­ing meme is prob­a­bly more mem­o­rable than cre­ator Nic Pizzolatto’s attempt to repli­cate the ini­tial suc­cess of his anthol­o­gy crime series. The McConais­sance, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s dis­tinct direct­ing style – includ­ing an auda­cious six-minute track­ing shot – and a mys­tery that had view­ers the­o­ris­ing as if they were watch­ing Twin Peaks or Lost, were all key, arguably unre­peat­able, fac­tors. With sea­son three, Piz­zo­lat­to has clear­ly attempt­ed to get some of that debut mag­ic back. But has it worked?

The first thing to note about True Detec­tive sea­son three is the return of the mul­ti­ple time­line for­mat. As the action weaves between 1980, 1990 and 2015 we fol­low Maher­sha­la Ali’s Detec­tive Wayne Hays, our nar­ra­tive teth­er and the anchor to the sto­ry. Hays was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived by Piz­zo­lat­to as a white man, but after Ali read the scripts, he lob­bied for the lead. It’s a good thing he did, because he is the heart of the first two episodes. Fur­ther­more, race fac­tors into the sto­ry in a way that would have been impos­si­ble with­out Ali in the role; despite being in a posi­tion of author­i­ty, Hays’ voice is not always heard.

Play­ing the same char­ac­ter across a 35-year peri­od is no easy task (par­tic­u­lar­ly as Hays is revealed to be suf­fer­ing from demen­tia) but Ali wears the scars and lines of this case in more ways than old age make­up and a grey wig. Hays is defen­sive dur­ing the 1990 inter­ac­tions, as his mem­o­ries are called into ques­tion. When his mind is fail­ing, he con­tin­ues to be guard­ed. He is haunt­ed in all three peri­ods, by his expe­ri­ences dur­ing the Viet­nam War, the prob­a­ble wrong­ful con­vic­tion and because the woman he loves is no longer by his side. In these moments, True Detec­tive sings again.

A bur­geon­ing romance in the ear­li­est time­line sets this sto­ry apart from oth­er weary cop tales. Sea­son one played the cliché of bro­ken mar­riages and affairs. In com­par­i­son, Hays’ inter­ac­tions with teacher Amelia (Car­men Ejo­go) are a breath of fresh air, even if some of the dia­logue is over­wrought at times. Amelia’s voice mat­ters to Hays – hope­ful­ly in the fol­low­ing episodes she won’t sim­ply fade into the help­ful girlfriend/​absent wife ter­ri­to­ry, which often takes up so much space in this kind of narrative.

The case that haunts a detec­tive years after the fact is anoth­er tried-and-test­ed nar­ra­tive, as is one that involves miss­ing chil­dren. When one ado­les­cent boy is ques­tioned in the first episode, he has to defend his choice of Black Sab­bath T‑shirt; a ref­er­ence to the ​“Satan­ic Pan­ic” in the 1980s, which dom­i­nat­ed the tri­al of the West Mem­phis Three. Sea­son one of the pod­cast In the Dark focused on the Jacob Wet­ter­ling kid­nap­ping – a case that went unsolved for 27 years – and the dis­ap­pear­ance of the Pur­cell kids in the first episode bears some of the hall­marks of this. It is hard to do some­thing new in this genre, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the glut of true crime pod­casts, doc­u­men­taries and books cur­rent­ly available.

A brief ref­er­ence to ​“crooked spi­ral” imagery might have some view­ers won­der­ing if this will all tie back to sea­son one. Time is a flat cir­cle, after all. But this seems to be more East­er Egg than a major clue. There are plen­ty of oth­er unan­swered ques­tions at this ear­ly junc­ture, includ­ing where Hays’ for­mer part­ner Roland West (Stephen Dorff) is, the iden­ti­ty of the per­son (or per­sons) orig­i­nal­ly con­vict­ed of the crime and what went down with Tom Pur­cell (the excel­lent Scoot McNairy). Some of this with­hold­ing of infor­ma­tion makes sense, as no one wants all the answers by episode two, yet this some­times comes across as con­ceal­ing details for con­trivance sake. There is teas­ing out loose threads, but some of these con­ver­sa­tions are vague to the point of ridiculous.

The extra­or­di­nary high that comes with first sea­son suc­cess is often swift­ly fol­lowed by clos­er scruti­ny and even­tu­al back­lash. It would be unfair to mea­sure the first two episodes of sea­son three against the show’s hal­cy­on McConaughey/​Harrelson days, but with Maher­sha­la Ali at the fore, True Detec­tive has become com­pelling view­ing once again.