I rewatched HBO's stunning mystery show 11 years after it originally came out – it's still unreal

I've said it before and I'll say it again – no one does it quite like HBO, even if its fragmented streaming presence means it sometimes struggles to stand as one of the best streaming services on the market. Here in the UK most of its catalogue is available through Sky Atlantic or Now, while in the US it's a simpler picture using Max.

I've recently picked up an entertainment pass for Now, and that's made me keen to revisit some of HBO's superb past work. One show that immediately stood out to me as worthy of a rewatch was True Detective. I've rewatched its first season in a bit of a binge this week, more than 10 years after it first came out.

True Detective - Season 1: Trailer - Official HBO UK - YouTube

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Surprise, surprise: it holds up pretty phenomenally, largely on the strengths of two stunning central performances from Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, who were rightly feted for their work at the time. Each of them excels in showing how a troubled and conflicted man can grow and change over a couple of decades of painstaking investigation.

In fact, the thing that I had forgotten, but which really is striking on a rewatch, is just how suspect each of the two main characters really is. Harrelson's detective is a philanderer with anger management issues, and McConaughey's is clearly in the grips of major bouts of PTSD and depression. This doesn't stop them from doing terrific work, but it makes them fascinating characters to watch and root for.

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The fact that I was a little surprised the season's score on Rotten Tomatoes is "only" 92% speaks for how much I enjoyed it. That said, enjoyment isn't quite the right word. Watching years of criminal activity be slowly uncovered in rural Louisiana leaves you feeling a good serving of dread in the pit of your stomach, for the most part.

The season has a couple of superb episode-closing moments that really sum that up, especially the first time we see a potential culprit stalking around his Bayou-overrun home, in the creepiest gas mask you could possibly design. They'll live long in the memory, but I'm going to steam ahead to the potentially underrated second season next, to see how that holds up in turn.