"One of the great things about this is that the identities of the men, at these times, was very clear. I didn’t have to do a lot of creative wandering in my head. One of my favorite things that I got to do with Cohle was go, “Who is he in ‘95?” Here’s a guy who is coming back on to a case, just barely hanging onto the rails. He needs a case to keep his shit together, literally. In 2012, he’s off the rails. He’s cashed in. He’s fallen prey to his own beliefs. Every day that he’s alive is another day of penance, in this indentured servitude he calls life."

"If you share my weakness for shows that shuffle time or have tense interrogations—like the late, great “Homicide” or the better seasons of “Damages”—you might be interested to see these methods com-bined. The modern interviews become a voice-over, which is layered over flashbacks, and the contrast between words and images reveals that our narrators have been cherry-picking details and, at crucial junctures, flat-out lying. So far, so complex. On the other hand, you might take a close look at the show’s opening credits, which suggest a simpler tale: one about heroic male outlines and closeups of female asses. The more episodes that go by, the more I’m starting to suspect that those asses tell the real story. This aspect of “True Detective” (which is written by Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Fukunaga) will be gratingly familiar to anyone who has ever watched a new cable drama get acclaimed as “a dark masterpiece”: the slack-jawed teen prostitutes; the strippers gyrating in the background of police work; the flashes of nudity from the designated put-upon wifey character; and much more nudity from the occasional cameo hussy, like Marty’s mistress, whose rack bounces merrily through Episode 2. Don’t get me wrong: I love a nice bouncy rack. And if a show has something smart to say about sex, bring it on."

"One of the images I first saw in my head when I read the screenplay was a plain landscape towards dusk," says Fukunaga over the phone from his home in New York. "There was a still, Magritte-like light hanging in the sky and these two cold, hard characters at the front, staring at a burned-out church. I loved the starkness of that, the openness of everything being exposed to the air. There's a lot of two-hander dialogue in True Detective, and I needed to place those guys in locations where there were other levels of visual storytelling. It didn't necessarily have to move the plot forward, but it had to add tone or add to the overall feeling."

"Look, the story is what the story is," says Fukunaga when I ask him about the criticism. "It's about two men who work in a very macho industry, in terms of the area they're working in and the crimes they're dealing with. But it's about two men's dysfunction as much as anything. The show is not going to pass the Bechdel test. I considerably doubt that. So is it sexist? I don't know. I always focus more on the main characters and what they're doing, and I didn't write it, so… My job is to make the best ver-sion of that story possible."

"What I love about Cohle is everything he says is true. Like it or not. He can’t suffer fools, and to get through everyday life, you have to suffer fools. Cohle can’t do that. No illusions. Absolutely not."

"Clancy Brown — Sheriff August Corbin"

"Neil Jackson — Abraham Van Brunt/The Headless Horseman"

"Matt Barr — Nicholas "Nick" Hawley"

"Sakina Jaffrey — Sheriff Leena Reyes"

"Orlando Jones — Capt. Frank Irving"

"Nicole Beharie — Lt. Grace Abigail "Abbie" Mills"

"Katia Winter — Katrina Crane"

"Tom Mison — Ichabod Crane"

"Lyndie Greenwood — Jennifer "Jenny" Mills"

"John Noble — Henry Parish/Jeremy Crane"

"John Cho — Det. Andy Brooks"

"Nicholas Gonzalez — Det. Luke Morales"

"Karl Yune – Maseo Yamashiro (season 3)"

"Susanna Thompson – Moira Queen (seasons 1–2)"

"Willa Holland – Thea Queen (seasons 1–6)"

"Paul Blackthorne – Detective Quentin Lance (seasons 1–6)"

"Emily Bett Rickards – Felicity Smoak (seasons 1–7)"

"Colton Haynes – Roy Harper (seasons 1–3; 7)"

"Manu Bennett – Slade Wilson (seasons 1–3, seasons 5–6)"

"John Barrowman – Malcolm Merlyn (seasons 1–5)"

"Echo Kellum – Curtis Holt (seasons 4–7)"

"Josh Segarra – Adrian Chase (season 5)"

"Rick Gonzalez – Rene Ramirez (seasons 5–8)"

"Juliana Harkavy – Dinah Drake (seasons 5–8)"

"Kirk Acevedo – Ricardo Diaz (seasons 6–7)"