The acclaimed TV drama True Detective arrives on disc this week.
The eight-part HBO series ($59.99 DVD, $79.98 Blu-ray/digital combo) starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as partners who seemed to have solved a serial-killer case in 1995, only to be brought back into it 17 years later. It was a somber, disturbing show, but it resonated with some viewers.
The Television Critics Association recently nominated it for four awards, including program of the year, and HBO has ordered a second season of True Detective, which creators said they envisioned as an anthology series, with different stars to be announced. (McConaughey told Deadline.com that he would not have done the first series if HBO had insisted on his signing up for more.)
Written by Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, True Detective does follow a case, often into seamy areas and, especially in its final episode, into some graphic horror. But it is much more about the detectives, Martin Hart (Harrelson) and Rust Cohle (McConaughey), two very different men who in some ways don't like each other much. Hart, for one, grows impatient with Cohle's cosmic monologues.
But there is a connection between the two and, in the final episode, with the case at last concluded, Pizzolatto prefers to close the show on the two men talking one more time. Their ties are even more evident through the performances by McConaughey and Harrelson, both at the top of their game.
Extras on disc include a making-of piece, interviews with McConaughey and Harrelson, "inside the episode" featurettes on each installment, deleted scenes, two audio commentaries and a discussion between Pizzolatto and composer T Bone Burnett about music on the show.
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