HBO's "True Detective" Season 4, which stars Jodie Foster and premieres Jan. 14 on HBO and Max, is the best-reviewed installment in the show's 10-year history. It currently has a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score, making it the most critically-acclaimed season since the show's Emmy-winning debut in 2014.
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That's saying a lot. "True Detective" Season 1 elevated the modern true crime genre and ushered in the McConaissance. Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, who still serve as executive producers on the series, brought their Texan cool and movie-star charisma to the small screen and made TV a worthy playground for serious actors. Series creator Nic Pizzolato became known for his existentialist, if sometimes unwieldy, dialogue. And Cary Fukunaga, who directed every episode of Season 1, made a meal out of every sickly bayou and heart-pounding action sequence.
But, overall, "True Detective" has been a mixed bag. It's an anthology series, so each installment is animated by an all-new cast and story. Season 2 starred Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams as a couple of hard-boiled detectives in a crime-ridden cesspool of a city. In Season 3, Mahershala Ali investigated an unsolved case into his old age. Now, Jodie Foster takes the reigns in a chilly Alaskan mystery—dubbed "True Detective: Night Country"—with tantalizing connections to Season 1.
Below, we run it back on the last decade of "True Detective," ranking the first three seasons from worst to best. A general rule for this show: When it's good, it's amazing. When it's bad, it's aggressively so. No half measures here!
#3. 'True Detective' Season 2
HBO
"True Detective" Season 2 (2015) is routinely cited as one of the worst seasons of TV ever. Some of that vitriol is simply the comedown from McConaughey and Harrelson's onscreen magic, but most of it is justified. Starting with the terribly miscast Vince Vaughn as Frank Semyon, a hard-luck case and lifelong criminal trying to go legitimate. His downfall is supposed to be Shakespearean, but Vaughn's bizarre performance was tiresome from Episode 1.
Even the world-class actors among the main cast couldn't elevate the season's video game feel. The story centers on three troubled officers who team up to solve a local politician's murder, dodging and engaging in corruption along the way. Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams are excellent as the miserable Velcoro and damaged Bezzerides, respectively. Taylor Kitsch is a little limp as the young Woodrugh, and Kelly Reilly's very capable wife of Frank Semyon wavers awkwardly between femme fatale and girl-next-door. In the end, Season 2 was too convinced of its own dark, simmering appeal to deliver anything but shoot-'em-up sequences and endless, endless overhead shots of L.A.
#2. 'True Detective' Season 3
HBO
Four years after the immense disappointment of Season 2, "True Detective" Season 3 (2019) was a return to form. We got a familiar buddy cop dynamic with equal parts swagger and emotion, and a decade-hopping unsolved mystery that maintained its vitality with each episode.
Season 3 is best remembered for Mahershala Ali's Emmy-nominated lead performance as Wayne "Purple" Hays, a Vietnam veteran and detective whose life and memory is wrapped up in the disappearance of two children in 1980s Arkansas. Stephen Dorff's quieter supporting performance as Hays' partner Roland West is the unsung hero of the season. We follow the twists and turns of their failed investigation and friendship over the course of 35 years. The 2015 timeline, in which an elderly Hays suffers from dementia, is a magnificent portrait of how perspective—and the lack thereof—shapes a life.
#1. 'True Detective' Season 1
HBO
Of course the inaugural McConaughey-Harrelson season is "True Detective" at its finest. Both actors received Emmy nominations for their roles, but it's McConaughey's electric turn as the brilliant, disillusioned Rust Cohle that has remained in the zeitgeist since 2014. In many other actors' mouths, Nic Pizzolatto's mystical dialogue is just word salad. McConaughey's effortless delivery elevates the material to prophecy.
The series follows detectives Marty Hart (Harrelson) and Rust Cohle as they investigate a series of ritualistic killings in the swamps of Louisiana. The story is largely told through a frame narrative: Seventeen years after first encountering inexplicable evil, an estranged Marty and Rust tell their respective sides of the story through depositions. Some have knocked the show for its hypermasculine sensibilities, or for its uneven use of folk horror and myth. But "True Detective" Season 1 is a monumental contribution to the American Gothic genre. Even if all that existential dread gets tiresome, you have to admit it's some of the best atmospheric TV out there.
"True Detective: Night Country" premieres Sunday, Jan. 14 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and Max. The first three seasons are currently streaming on Max.
READ MORE: What Are Those Crooked Spirals That Keep Popping Up in 'True Detective'?
