Woody Harrelson is returning to the medium that made him a star. Deadline reports that the actor, who formerly appeared on “Cheers,” will team with real-life best friend Matthew McConaughey for a television series called “True Detectives,” which is searching for a home on cable networks right now. We’ve got all the plot details and more after the jump.
Here’s Deadline’s rundown of the story:
It centers on two detectives, Rust Cohle (McConaughey) and Martin Hart (Harrelson), whose lives collide and entwine during a seventeen-year hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana. The investigation of a bizarre murder in 1995 is framed and interlaced with testimony from the detectives in 2012, when the case has been reopened.
The series will have an eight episode first season with the mystery solved by the end, and future seasons will take on the same structure but with new characters and stories. That leaves the actors a chance to jump back into making movies as soon as production finishes on the first season, so it’s pretty much a win-win for them. In any case, the story for season one will definitely lean toward a highly serialized narrative instead of just a normal “case of the week” structure, which makes me want to see it even more.
I love serialized television. TV where you actually have to pay attention to details and pick up on little clues in one episode that could come back four episodes later has always been much more rewarding for me as a viewer than mindless series you can pick up in the middle and know what’s going on. I see the reasoning behind the creation of content like that – people work hard all day, and want to turn off their brains when they get home and lounge around the house – but in this golden age of awesome narrative series, I love the fact that shows like “True Detectives” are still being made.
Sin Nombre director Cary Fukunaga is set to direct all of the first season episodes. What do you think about McConaughey and Harrelson starring together in a TV show like this?
