Yesterday we got our first look at Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom,” and we also heard that both “Girls” and “Veep” – despite only having aired a total of five episodes between them – had both been renewed for a second season. It must be a busy week in the HBO offices, because hot on the heels of all that they’ve announced that they’ve made an eight-episode, straight-to-series order for a show headlined by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.
“True Detective” is described by Deadline as “an eight-part event drama series project” and “an elevated serial narrative with multiple perspectives and timeframes.” The focus is on two detectives, Rust Cohle and Martin Hart (played the two Texans McConaughey and Harrelson, respectively) whose lives become entangled during a 17-year hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana. The show will flit between the detectives’ testimonies in the present and their prior investigations, with the plan to resolve the mystery within the course of the season. Any subsequent seasons would use the same structure but introduce new characters and stories.
Cary Fukunaga (“Jane Eyre”) will direct all eight episodes of the series, which had been the subject of a bidding war. Harrelson and McConaughey are both actors who can deliver the goods when called upon (something they've both been doing with a much greater frequency of late), and we’re particularly confident about their parts in this project after having seen “Rampart” and “The Lincoln Lawyer” over the course of the last twelve months. We were super psyched about this series when we first heard about it, and that excitement has only increased now that it's in HBO's capable hands. So let's see what this initial eight-episode order can deliver.