True Detective - Season 3 (2019 Nic Pizzolatto)

Low key approach with everyone mumbling along in TD style. Nevertheless intriguingly plotted story over three time zones of detectives involved in murder of boy and disappearance of his sister. The ending is quite unexpected, and good.

As before Nic Pizzolatto is the main writer and he has directed some episodes.

Mahershala Ali is particularly hard to understand in 2015 scenes, Stephen Dorff, Carmen Ojogo, Scoot McNairy (the father), Mamie Gummer (mother, Ricki and the Flash, Side Effects), Ray Fisher (Ali's son), Sarah Gadon (interviewer), Brett Cullen, Steven Williams (Junius).

The Ali character has quite a chip on his shoulder, thus some of the two cops' relationship is about race. His relationship with his wife is not too straightforward either. The very last shot (he in Vietnam) suggests a post-war theme too, with the most violent (and most exciting) episode involving the shoot-out with Vet (Michael Greyeyes), and there's a whole organised child abuse ring conspiracy thing lurking there too which manages to reference the stories in seasons one and two - turns out it's a complete red herring. The other tragedy being that of the missing girl's father.

Jeremy Saulnier and Daniel Sackheim were the other directors. Germain McMicking photographed it and T Bone Burnett and Keefus Ciancia provided the moody score. HBO. Fukunaga, Harrelson and McConaughey are all still exec producers.

Committed performance