Back in June, we caught the first glimpse of Cary Fukunaga‘s first foray into dramatic television with HBO‘s “True Detective,” and since then we had the opportunity to chat with the “Jane Eyre” director about both his vision for the project and two topnotch leads, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. “I saw a stark bland American landscape, and two really strong male voices,” he said. “That for me was kinda the drive, to get into the psychology of two men—one more of a philosopher and the other a non-critical-thinking man, and just to play with that world and observe.” Well now, we’ve got a much clearer look at exactly what Fukanaga described for the show, it’s very clear that his vision will be making it to the small screen intact.
Written by award-winning novelist Nic Pizzolatto, the show follows McConaughey and Harrelson as detectives who continually cross paths during a 17-year manhunt for a Louisiana serial killer, with a narrative framed by beleaguered testimony from the pair in 2012 as the case is reopened. In a new trailer for the eight-part season, we get a sense of that overwhelming toll taken on the detectives, with haunting shots of McConaughey—wide-eyed, gaunt, and stringy-haired—explaining his tale. Harrelson looks to be matching his co-star in performance as well, blending in nicely with the dire, fatalistic tone that Fukunaga looks to pursue.
And although this is called “True Detective,” it looks like there are elements of Southern Gothic mysticism sprinkled throughout, with strange symbols and occult aspects to the case, including one menacingly bundled clump of branches that was more than a little reminiscent of “The Blair Witch Project.”
The series, which costars Kevin Dunn, Michelle Monaghan, Alexandra Daddario (who looks like she gets very, very topless), Michael Potts and Elizabeth Reaser, was already high atop our most-anticipated list when it was first announced, and the new look has only pressed that need further. Check out the trailer below, and consider us counting down the days until “True Detective” premieres on HBO in January 2014.