True Detective Provides Talented Acting and Exciting Plot

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True Detective provides talented acting and exciting plot HBO’s True Detective has been one of the best shows to come to television in recent years. With its riveting action sequences, sizzling erotic scenes, and amazing cast, this program, directed by Cary Fukanaga, truly provides audiences with gripping television. Set in the mid-1990s and filmed in Louisiana, detectives Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rustin “Rust” Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) are on the trail of a ritual-obsessed serial killer who adorns his victims’ bodies with antlers and other symbols. Told mostly through flashbacks, the show cuts to scenes of the detectives being interviewed in present day, with hints at their possible corruption. The excitement of the program comes with the transition between seasons, with each season having a completely new story and cast. This format ensures that the viewer is never left with a cliffhanger, as all the questions have to be answered by the last episode of each season. For me, actors have done their job when they are completely absorbed in their part and the audience no longer sees an actor, but only a character. McConaughey and Harrelson achieve this feat and truly bring these characters off the screen and into our living rooms. However, where these actors really excel is their power to tell a story. Now, one might think that storytelling comes from the writer, but the detectives’ use of facial expressions, along with slight mannerisms to get their intended message across, certainly brings the show to a whole new level. However, the area in which this series is lacking is where so many other great shows today excel—the presence of strong female characters. While the Rust-and-Martin duo is strong and well-developed, each woman they come across is paper thin. Whether they are strippers or teen hookers, it seems that their only power in the show is to remove their shirts. Nonetheless, there is one female character who rises above the rest and holds weight in the show—Marty’s wife, Maggie (Michelle Monaghan). Maggie is somewhat of an exception, as she displays her strength by walking out on Martin after discovering his affair. As goes for any series, the best way to judge it is by each season finale, and I have to say, it was captivating. The fact that the two detectives finally came together and put aside their differences in order to achieve a happy ending was a breath of fresh air. Overall, I have high hopes for this series. It had an interesting setup; I just hope that next time they’ll invest in more developed female characters. All criticism aside, True Detective is truly one of the greatest shows on television right now. With its captivating plot and extremely talented cast, the program never ceases to excite. I’m interested to see what the producers are going to try to do next year to top this amazing first season. .

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Accepted Manuscript Version
Research Archive Citation for published version: Kim Akass, and Janet McCabe, ‘HBO and the Aristocracy of Contemporary TV Culture: affiliations and legitimatising television culture, post-2007’, Mise au Point, Vol. 10, 2018. DOI: Link to published article in journal's website Document Version: This is the Accepted Manuscript version. The version in the University of Hertfordshire Research Archive may differ from the final published version. Copyright and Reuse: This manuscript version is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives License CC BY NC-ND 4.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. Enquiries If you believe this document infringes copyright, please contact Research & Scholarly Communications at [email protected] 1 HBO and the Aristocracy of TV Culture : affiliations and legitimatising television culture, post-2007 Kim Akass and Janet McCabe In its institutional pledge, as Jeff Bewkes, former-CEO of HBO put it, to ‘produce bold, really distinctive television’ (quoted in LaBarre 90), the premiere US, pay- TV cable company HBO has done more than most to define what ‘original programming’ might mean and look like in the contemporary TV age of international television flow, global media trends and filiations. In this article we will explore how HBO came to legitimatise a contemporary television culture through producing distinct divisions ad infinitum, framed as being rooted outside mainstream commercial television production. In creating incessant divisions in genre, authorship and aesthetics, HBO incorporates artistic norms and principles of evaluation and puts them into circulation as a succession of oppositions— oppositions that we will explore throughout this paper.
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