Who knew the bar would be set so high so early?” Andrew Romano of The Daily Beast calls the first season “revolutionary”, “riveting”, and “provocative”. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tim Goodman writes, “True Detective, coming as it does after what was arguably the best year for dramas in at least five years… just puts an exclamation point on the topic of excessive quality. Although the show was designed to be serialized, with a new locale and set of actors each season, McConaughey and Harrelson came out of the gate with such distinctive performances that a firm horizon of expectations was established right from the outset. Undoubtedly, the Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson-led inaugural season, set in the aesthetically and morally murky environs of the Louisiana bayou, will forever be the iconic iteration of the show. The first was the wave of exultation that True Detective rode following its debut season. Before the second season of True Detective aired on HBO in the summer of 2015, two storm clouds loomed over the hotly anticipated crime drama.
