All 4 seasons of True Detective, ranked from worst to best

2. True Detective season 3

Although Night Country references the first season of True Detective on several occasions, at the end of the day it feels like its own animal, with its own thematic and narrative concerns. Seasons 2 and 3, on the other hand, both feel like they're trying to recreate the specific alchemy of season 1, and neither quite gets there. But season 3 is definitely more successful.

This time, our hero is Wayne Hays (Mahershala Ali), who in his old age returns to a cold case and and his former partner Roland West (Stephen Dorff) failed to crack in their youth and then again in middle age. Time and memory play big roles in True Detective season 3, as the older Wayne has to deal not only with a factual record that's long since decayed, but also his own failing memory. Playing Wayne across three different time periods, Mahershala Ali gives the best performance of the show so far. He's excellent front to back.

As if correcting for the overwrought season 2, season 3 of True Detective adopts a "just the facts" approach to its cold case, with few gestures towards the idea of malevolent forces manipulating things from behind the scenes. From the jump, these are fallible human heroes investigating crimes committed by compromised, broken human villains. The result is a narrative that hangs together even under scrutiny, although it feels a little less special and mysterious than fans might like.

True Detective season 3 feels like the workhorse of the series: it's solid and dependable if not especially spectacular. At the end of the day, nothing beats the original: