But how did the critics take to the anthology series' return? Digital Spy rounds up the reviews for the first three episodes of True Detective season two below:
© Twitter / @TrueDetective
Digital Spy
"As it turns out, you really can't recapture lightning in a bottle. Despite an atmospheric new credit sequence centred on Leonard Cohen's spine-tingling 'Nevermind', the loss of Fukunaga has translated to a far less distinctive visual style, with Justin Lin and Janus Metz directing the first three episodes with by-the-numbers gritty elegance. Anything could happen over the next five episodes, but it's hard to imagine that anything as staggering as Fukunaga's bravura six-minute tracking shot is in the offing.
"Pizzolatto and his material would both have been better served by abandoning the anthology series model, because the comparison to former glory does True Detective's second run no favours. Season one's mystery ended in anticlimax and it didn't matter, because that story was about so much more than the resolution of a murder. Here, we can only hope that Pizzolatto has one hell of a narrative payoff in st! ore, because for all the portentous speeches there is very little going on beyond the skilfully plotted mystery."
© Twitter / @TrueDetective
Vanity Fair
"Based on the first three episodes, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about True Detective's second season. Writer Nic Pizzolatto's grim anthology series has lost the element of surprise, and so while last year many of us were happily thrown off balance by his turgid, earnest ruminations on the futility of existence, this time around it all feels a bit, 'Oh, this again?' Season 2 strains to make up for that sense of familiarity, reaching further for profundity, but often coming up with some soggy stuff.
"Pizzolatto's brand of horror-tinged philosophical ache and dread worked well in season 1's mystical bayous - they seemed separate enough from the rest of the world to almost be their own planet. But with the action moved to more familiar Los Angeles County, and with a more conventional plot about municipal corruption complicating the murder investigation, Season 2 is perhaps too grounded in the real world. I found my! self wishing these sad sacks would just take a shower, drink a glass of water, and go for a day at the beach, or a nice hike in Griffith Park. It's LA! Quit moping and go enjoy the sunshine."
© Twitter / @TrueDetective
TIME
"Season 2 (HBO screened three episodes for critics) loses the novelty of the show's first outing and highlights the weaknesses. A crew of new directors create a more intimate but more TV-conventional look, as Pizzolatto leads his cops past a parade of vacant sex workers, greasy pimps and blowsy dames. And where Louisiana made fertile and unusual ground for a noir story, both the setting and the dialogue this time around feel much more familiar. The original's road-trip bull sessions and cat-and-mouse interrogations are replaced with clipped lines that play like poster copy: 'I welcome judgment.' 'Never do anything out of hunger.' 'Everybody gets touched.'
"The setup of three cops with three agendas investigating the same case has strong possibilities, and there's a Chinatown potential in the premise of turning California infrastructure into gold, if the series could transmute its leaden angst.
"Season two captures that idea! - of the massive, inhuman networks mankind creates for commerce - in the signature visual of the season, its aerial establishing shots of California freeways, with their vast curlicued interchanges. But that image also feels symbolic. For season one's Rust Cohle, time was a flat circle. Season 2 thus far looks more like a tangle, going nowhere interesting."
© Twitter / @TrueDetective
Screen Crush
"True Detective just isn't True Detective anymore.
"I don't say that as some damning critique, but a bare summation of season 2 as we've known it; a muddled, if haunting crime drama scrutinised under a fandom that charts endless theories to connect films, and spins one TV series out of another to bridge some semblance of a 'shared universe'. Conceptually, True Detective would have more in common with the American Horror Story franchise, keeping some key talent under the umbrella to maintain a vaguely cohesive brand name.
"Still, with creator Nic Pizzolatto's voice the sole holdover from season 1, and sorely lacking the uniform vision of director Cary Fukunaga, a more apt comparison might see Joss Whedon following the highs of Firefly with a season of Dollhouse, but calling both series by the same name. For all the talk of 'lightning in a bottle', True Detecti! ve was never necessarily meant for a second season; its climactic, if divisive finale tying off a simpler focused meditation on man's nihilism, and the evolution of two distinctly well-rounded characters."
IGN
"By its very nature True Detective season 2 is poised to be compared with its predecessor. It also cannot become the unexpected hit of the season... because we are expecting it. We're looking for it. Some would defy it to be as riveting as those first few episodes of season 1. This is not the mesmerizing tale of two diametrically opposed men who become bound by blood and the search for honour, though. The debut episode of True Detective's second season is burdened by an overly complex plot and weakened by simplified character sketches. However, in total this is an engaging enough detective series that has the potential to become more so."
USA Today
"Sometimes the worst thing about the emperor's new clothes is that they remind you how much you miss the old ones.
"Not that the first season of True Detective was perfect, although the first half certainly came close. B! ut it was beautifully acted by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and brilliantly directed by Cary Fukunaga, who created such a palpable sense of a hot, fetid Louisiana, you almost felt like you needed a sweet tea at the end of every episode.
"But in reality, True Detective was a one-off, and while the name returns, the actors, the story and the director are all gone. What remains are creator Nic Pizzolatto's writing and HBO's penchant for big-name casting - and the combination proves to be much less potent this time around."
People
"The basic problem at the outset is that season 2, bending over backward to distinguish itself from the groundbreaking season 1, goes too far in the other direction and nearly falls over. Season 1 mapped out its essential territory within the first 15 minutes and then was free to wander through Southern backwoods, burned-out churches, trash-heaped backyards and derelict palaces heaped with bones. Everything depended, from start to finish, on the superb Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as a plain-spoken realist (Harrelson) partnered with a demented philosopher (McConaughey) - a bromantic archetype that sums up everyone from Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.
"Season 2 is set up more like a dysfunctional Three Musketeers, which is promising - except at first they're closer to three blind mice stumbling through a lab maze that happens to be Los Angeles... However, the chief purpose of this review! is to counsel patience: Get through that first episode, mark the arrival of that corpse and return for a much better second week - and a jolting shock."
True Detective airs Sundays on HBO in the US, and on Mondays at 9pm on Sky Atlantic in the UK.
What did you think of True Detective's return? Let us know in the comments below!
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