The Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson team from “True Detective” is a tough act to follow. The show does not give its new lineup, which includes Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch, a clean slate when it comes to audience expectations. However the news that Farrell gained 40 pounds of weight in eight weeks in preparation of his role as compromised cop Ray Velcoro, falls in line with the high standards that this TV series managed to set through its single season run.While HBO programming president Michael Lombardo recently announced that the first two scripts for season two are even “more exciting” than the first, executive producer and creator of “True Detective” Nic Pizzolatto has tried to temper fan expectations by announcing that the new season will not focus as much on occult conspiracies and Gothic horror sensibilities as much as “closer character work and a more grounded crime story”.Pizzolatto says the new story, which has no connection with the characters or plot of the first season, is about “bad men and hard women”. Besides Farrell’s Velcoro whose allegiances are torn between a corrupt police department and a mobster that owns him, there’s Rachel McAdams playing the main female lead, Sheriff Ani Bezzirades; Taylor Kitsch as war vet and motorcycle highway patrol officer Paul Woodrugh and Vince Vaughn as criminal businessman Frank Semyon. The premise is these three cops and the mobster are thrown together due to a mysterious murder early on in the show and the characters have to traverse a scorched Californian landscape beset with conspiracy, betrayal and corruption in the pursuit of the murderer, and most likely, personal redemption.This time round, the story is set in the unglamorous 400 miles of California between San Francisco and Los Angeles mottled with strip malls and intermingled highways, and revolves around a corrupt scheme regarding a high-speed rail deal. Makes one think of the 1974 classic noir film “Chinatown”?True Detective Season 2 premieres on HBO on June 21, 2015.
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