Yeah I am also sorry about repeating myself, it was never advertised as a CHARACTER drama Alan, also it would have been nice to have had some original storyline with it rather than a cliched pile of shite
Well as British character drama is the norm and not something we are short of, unlike you Americans.
Like I said before and people really do seem to miss my point, it was never seen as a character drama, well over here it wasn’t advertised as such so I went it to it expecting while not a procedual drama but an investigative one with character.
Even as a character drama one of the two was as basic as you can get, cop, having multiple affairs and hitting his daughter. It just didn’t do it for me and you are right I have little intereest in character dramas, enough of that in real life.
Actually, it was. Repeatedly. And it was quite obviously a character drama about a third of the way into the first episode.
But hey, you didn’t like it. A couple of people didn’t. I’m glad you’re able to stick with your completely wrong-headed assessment.
— Alan
Alan, i live in England, we got 1 trailer and that was it, its also shown on cable not one of the main national channels everyone gets, we had no interviews, preview snips or anything and being behind the shows by 5 episodes makes it even harder as you are trying to avoid spoilers at all costs.
To add it never felt like it was character driven for the first 2 episodes it felt like most decent drama which are longer than 3 hours a setting of the scene and people involved in it, the fact it went on for 8 hours means its character driven i suppose.
I think for a final time i will put up how it unfolded for me and you can take it as you please.
There was minimal advertising around it, we got a sky specific clip which looked good. Word of mouth said it was good but being 5 episodes behind the US we decided to have a story blackout because we didn’t want to have it spoilt.
We watched the first 4 episodes over 2 nights. The first 2 were excellent, setting the scene introducing the characters, atmosphere was amazing, acting superb, Cohle was excellent, Hart personally found him too much a cliche.
We thought it was an investigative / procedural / storyline based drama. I’ve now been told quite correctly it was not but a character driven drama, something we never realised until it was mentioned here and something which would have meant we probably wouldn’t have watched it or maybe not have stuck with it to the end and watched it weekly rather than cramming it in in a few days.
So for all those that sat through it knowing what it was great you got what you got what you wanted, for us we didn’t. However after episode 4 we knew it wasnt our thing but we wanted to stick with it.
My feedback is regardless of how great the character acting, atmosphere, music and cinematography was and is it still suffers from too many of the old crime hack cliches. The storyline part of it was poor, the last episode had everyone of them in the book. Marty’s cop story was as generic as there has ever been, cop has affairs, hits daughter gets kicked out.
Now Cohle was superb from start to finish and certainly was the highlight of the show.
Sometimes you know just because other people don’t agree with the majority it doesn’t mean their points are not valid, it feels like because i don’t agree with certain things or people it seems ok to take the piss, the reality is not everyone is looking at it in the same way. I am not expecting people to change their own opinions on how they enjoyed it just a different perspective on how we saw it, my dad loved it and the last snooker night we discussed it and he still thinks I’m mad that I didn’t enjoy it.
Just to add we have only had 4 episodes so far in the UK and I downloaded the last 4 which is why when it comes to the show itself and what is shown we were limited, we only got the trailer, no interviews no podcasts no anything just see this new show called True Detective. Knowing you peeps are far ahead meant no entering the forum threads due to spoilers etc, in fact participation in these threads is not easy due to the time difference in shows being shown, sometimes we are 6 months behind, I mean we still don’t have a start date for Hannibal season 2 while you are already watching it, means a media blackout otherwise it ends up getting spoiled.
The idea wasn’t to piss anyone off just to give my perspective of the show even if it was based on an incorrect understanding of what the show was about, i suppose I am more disappointed that it wasn’t what i thought it was and could be really.
wheeew, what a productive way to talk about the show.
Thanks for the perspective, Reemul. I’ll take a sincere post where someone explains their subjective opinion over one saying ‘you’re wrong, dummy’ any day of the week.
Honestly I can’t say I disagree with Reemul in any significant way. By the time I was turned onto the Internet Clue Engine, it had sort of run out into typical overzealous memery where anyone paying a bit of attention might start to think that the ridiculous tiny details people were culling from ancient tomes or whatever might not pan out after all and maybe the showrunners weren’t half as clever/sneaky as the internet thought/hoped.
So, peel away that possibility and you are left with a character drama about two damaged people running through pretty basic police stuff. The guys playing those damaged people acted the hell out of the roles and the cinematographer probably deserves an emmy, but in the strictest sense, I don’t really find basic character drama (“Oh woe my life is sad here are terrible things happening to me and my increasingly erratic reactions to them!”) interesting, and this was hardly Shakespearean in quality even there.
I came away from the show having enjoyed the elements they did well enough to not feel like I wasted my time, but in retrospect, it’s actually the kind of show I really like to watch.
The weird thing I get from your extended descriptions here is that it seems like you’re British and came into it hoping for something that’s the norm on American TV, and all the things you wish had replaced the “cliche” parts of it are basically the most incredibly trite and cliche parts of American procedurals. So the fact that it’s a British-ish character drama on an American channel sets it apart from other things here and makes you hate it over there.
What!!! There is a big disconnect between the type of tv produced by the US and by the UK. There is very little UK TV like anything you get in the US, except to the cliche parts I have already mentioned, that seems world wide and the norm. As an avid reader of the last 30 years as I mentioned TD hits all of those cliches seen in thousands of crime / detective novels I have read.
We have two cable companies that predominently show US stuff on a few of it’s channels, I mean all your most popular shows and we then have the BBC and ITV which show stuff which is absolutely nothing like your tv in most cases.
Most of our stuff is 6-8 episodes long, character or period drama, even our detective stuff is like that, we don’t do shows like CSI, Person of Interest, The Wire, Walking Dead, Breaking Bad and so it really just doesn’t happen. Even our very best stuff may only have 20 episodes over it’s lifetime of being made or shown.
What I do believe is you don’t get to watch all our TV in fact you get very little of it where as we have a few channels of US stuff over here.
The problem with True Detective as I said is I generally dislike Character Driven drama whether it’s from the UK or the US, not my sort of TV but there certainly is a lack of it from the US compared to the UK and yes I do enjoy US TV in many cases because it isn’t like UK TV, there is more than enough British style TV from the UK to watch all day long, the reason to watch US shows is because they are different to what we normally get over here and I feel that is a good thing, I mean having twice the choice now is great, in fact we have a perpetual backlog thanks to this.
To add the point of my being British is that 99% of the forum is from elsewhere, mostly American and as such most answers seem to assume everyone else is the same when a few of us aren’t and that means different answers, perspective or even just the way we receive or get information can be different. Like we don’t get your shows until you may have finished that season or are half way through it, we don’t do show breaks, some of our channels don’t do adverts meaning shows last 42 minutes not 1 hour and so on. There is a real big difference between the UK and US shows, I mean when visiting the US on holiday I have found we are lot more different than anyone would think considering we actually speak the same language where as visiting Europe we were more similar than you would think considering we don’t speak the same language (but that is a discussion for another topic)
Just to add there is no UK is superior or American is, just that generally there are distinctive feels to each countries shows and TD was different in the character driven side that is not the norm for this type of show from America and we didn’t realise that which is not a bad thing, just not our thing this time.
Reemul, how would you rate True Detective against Luther?
I have to admit I struggled with Luther, mainly because it is more character driven than I like, I freely admit when it comes to TV I am a bit of a neanderthal and prefer things simpler. I get my character driven stuff from reading rather than watching. True detective is no doubt a great show just not my sort of show.
Luther is excellent again in it’s own way. Luther himself is very complex and at time struggles to make the correct choices and deal with things when he can’t get what he wants , I will admit the storyline side of it is better though but is something I would recommend to people interested in a character driven detective show, Idris Elba is superb but I get frustrated in his inner workings and complexity and from my preference it frustrates however like TD if that is your thing I really recommend it.
Apparently there is going to be a Luther film but not more seasons, I mean 14 episodes over 3 season is the norm for this sort of TV show in the UK, we have a tendency to stop while the stuff is still good rather than let it descend in to mediocrity.
Having typed this made me realise my main issue with character driven shows is my frustration with their behaviour, my personality is very organisational, a to b to c especially as a middle manager it sort of fits me and tv shows which alienate that really makes it hard for me to watch yet with books I seem to cope better, not sure why.
Books have time and space to get inside characters heads and show thought processes and motivations, so maybe gives you more of a chance to relate or be more sympathetic towards them.
Judging by your explanations, here are some US TV shows you might enjoy more than True Detective: Law and Order, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, CSI, CSI: New York, CSI: Miami.
Though I have to say CSI: Miami is a bit sillier than any of those others.
Yeah we have watched a few of those, I admit to being a Criminal Minds fan as well as Person of Interest. There is one character driven show I really love and that is Hannibal. We now have our own version of Law and Order as well which is ok but not quite as good as the US version.
Well luckily for you Law and Order is possibly the longest running procedural series ever, at 20 seasons (US style, meaning 22-24 episodes per season)! Between that and the spin-off series there are literally over a thousand hours of TV with little to no reliance on character drama in them waiting for you! You need never watch anything like True Detective or Luther again!
http://www.tubeplus.me/player/1085885/Law_and_Order/season_1/episode_1/Prescription_for_Death/
Or Law and Order, hate anything with courtroom drama in and the second half of the show is full of it, still keep it up, one day you may know your audience, maybe their are some clues up there somewhere.
I am seriously laughing so hard right now.
Sorry Tom, I also think Divergent is the least risky kind of movie to make right now.
