Time may be a flat circle, but for True Detective, the last seven years have often played out like a roller-coaster ride through the pop-culture Zeitgeist.
Nic Pizzolatto’s crime drama was first born way back in early 2012, when HBO gave it a straight-to-series order amid intense interest from other networks. Its arrival five years ago this month was a Major TV Event, welcomed with enthusiastic reviews, strong ratings, and 12 Emmy nominations. HBO wasted little time getting to work on a follow-up, prompting feverish speculation around its casting (and giving birth to the#TrueDetectiveSeason2 meme in the process). But when the second installment of the anthology arrived the next year, critics were far less kind (Vulture wondered whether the show had jumped into the hate-watch category) and the buzz turned sharply negative. At the 2015 Emmys, host Andy Samberg captured the show’s fall from grace in one brutal joke: “We also said goodbye to True Detective — even though it’s still on the air.” Emmy voters also pretty much ignored season two, while industry insiders speculated whether the show would come back — and if viewers would still care.
A full three and half years after its June 2015 season-two premiere, True Detective finally returns to HBO this Sunday. It resurfaces in a dramatically changed (and crowded) TV ecosystem, one it helped reshape by making it safe for big-name feature-film stars to topline limited series. But in addition to the whodunnit it will unspool for viewers over the next seven weeks, there’s another mystery: What took so long to revive True Detective — and why was HBO willing to move forward after such an extended absence?
Casey Bloys, the president of HBO Entertainment, is, of course, aware of all the chatter surrounding True Detective season three. He’s been answering questions about the series since he took over as head of drama for the network in January 2016 (and became its top programmer a few months later). First came more than a year’s worth of inquiries about whether or not Pizzolatto even wanted to write another season (or if said season would happen at all). When word leaked in March 2017 that the writer had penned some scripts, there were reports that Deadwood creator David Milch was coming on board as a collaborator (he ultimately worked on just one episode). When the series finally did start production in early 2018, a mini-drama about a change in directors sprung up.
Bloys says some of the external narrative around True Detective is simply wrong, particularly reports of trouble once filming began. “There is just more noise around this show than a lot of [other shows],” he says. Still, the exec concedes its return was hardly a given: “[It] was no sure thing that we were going to do a third season.”
That lack of certainty had nothing to do with HBO’s interest in keeping True Detective alive. While season two was critically panned, it was still a hit with audiences. Including viewing on nonlinear platforms, 10.9 million people watched the follow-up season, a decline of just 8 percent from the 11.9 million who caught the first installment. “There’s a lot of interest around this title for our subscribers,” Bloys says. But he adds that he and Pizzolatto were “both on the same page” about not wanting to commit to anything prematurely. “We had a conversation with Nic, which was, let’s take our time and get this right,” Bloys recalls. “Let’s get a pass that we’re really excited about. And let’s not rush to do it, just to do it. I don’t think Nic had any interest in doing that, nor did we.”
A key reason all parties involved may have opted for a go-slow approach is the sense that season two was rushed into production prematurely. Bloys declined to comment on decisions made before he took the reins, but his predecessor as HBO Entertainment president, Michael Lombardo, has all but admitted to pressuring Pizzolatto to come up with a sequel too quickly.
(Excerpt) Read More at: Vulture.com