Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

True Detective: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 1, 2019

In his True Detective: The Complete First Season Blu-ray review, my colleague Ken Brown kind of interestingly wondered what direction any then potential future “seasons” of a so- called "limited series" offering like this one might take. And as I myself mentioned in my True Detective: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray review, the departure (as performers) of Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson seemed to indicate the show was going the “anthology” route, and thus any perceived connective tissue between the first and second seasons was probably tenuous at best. A lot of fans found the second season of True Detective to be at least something of a letdown when compared to the first, and for that reason perhaps, writer (and in this season, director) Nic Pizzolatto probably understandably returns to a couple of tropes he explored in the first season, including an emphasis on partner policemen, as well as a rather interesting refractive approach that pits several different timelines against each other, with each giving new meaning and context to the other eras as events unfold.

While there is a partnership at the core of the police side of things, it’s Mahershala Ali’s character of Wayne Hays, a former Arkansas state police detective, who is front and center throughout the three timeframes featured in this story. In 1980, a brother and sister named Will and Julie Purcell disappear mysteriously after telling their father they were biking to a friend’s house to see a new dog the friend had gotten. Hays and his partner Roland West (Stephen Dorff) are brought in to investigate. A decade later, it turns out that Hays and West’s efforts haven’t been enough to (totally) crack the case, and there is some evidence that at least one of the children is still alive, living in secret somewhere. A decade and a half after that, an aging and infirm Hays, suffering from dementia, is being interviewed for one of those “true crime” documentaries that is looking into the Purcell case.

The series ping pongs between these three timeframes with apparent abandon, though slowly a “strategy” of sorts emerges that increasingly defines what actually happened in both 1980 and 1990, with some shock waves still reverberating as late as 2015. A lot of this season plays it pretty straight along established “procedural” routes, but a couple of relationships keep the going interesting. There’s a somewhat fraught situation between Hays and West, especially in some of the latter material, but there’s an appealing romance that develops between Hays and a local teacher named Amelia (Carmen Ejogo), a woman who taught the Purcell kids and ends up writing a book about the case (something that also leads to consequences down the line).

I’m frankly not sure if the actual “mystery” at the center of this particular case pays enough dividends in the long run, but the story does offer a series of rather riveting supporting turns by a number of performers bringing often troubled characters to life. There’s a kind of rehashed quality to some aspects of the “reveal” (such as it is — one of the really interesting things about this season is how it plays off of Hays’ increasing dementia in his supposed “golden years”), something that may undercut at least some of the energy the series does manage to convey getting to that moment. Some of the makeup “aging” Ali isn’t especially helpful, either, and there were a couple of moments where I kind of cheekily wondered whether the Academy Award winner was auditioning for a new version of Uncle Drew.

What works here, and works very well indeed, is the look at several characters over the span of decades. No major spoilers here, but suffice it to say not every character makes it through the gauntlet of time unscathed, or frankly even alive, but the writing is generally very smart in detailing how some of these wounded people change over the course of time, attempting to deal in their own ways with a horrible tragedy involving the Purcell kids. There’s a certain sleight of hand in the wrap up to this season which may leave some viewers both satisfied and kind of simultaneously troubled, but even that is testament to the nice layering that Pizzolatto (who either wrote or co-wrote all of the episodes this season) brings to the project.

True Detective: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

True Detective: The Complete Third Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The IMDb can be a tad confusing when listing technical credits of a show like this that utilizes different technologies over the course of its different seasons, but if I'm understanding their listing correctly, this season was captured at a native 8K by Panavision's DXL camera. The only DI data I see seems to be for season 2, so I'm not entirely positive if this was finished at 2K or 4K (any authoritative, verifiable information that anyone can pass on to me would be appreciated, and as always I will post an update to the review if such information comes to me). One way or the other, this is an invitingly detailed presentation, despite the prevalence of what I'd call wintry environments that don't offer a ton of color. While the palette is arguably on the drab and even dowdy side, detail and fine detail levels are typically excellent throughout, with elements like some of Hays' tweedy jacket fabrics looking really precise and flawlessly rendered. Interestingly, there really doesn't seem to be a consistent way the different eras have been delineated in terms of grading and the like, though several of the 1980 sequences do feature a kind of jaundiced yellow tone, something that can occasionally mask fine detail levels. I noticed no issues with compression anomalies.

True Detective: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

True Detective: The Complete Third Season features a workmanlike DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that does offer some decent surround activity in some of the outdoor material, where ambient environmental sounds frequently spill into the side and rear channels. A lot of this season is given over to rather long dialogue sequences, though, and as such immersive qualities can be at least relatively limited. Fidelity is fine throughout the presentation, and there are no problems with distortion, dropouts or other damage.

True Detective: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One

• Designing the Decades (1080p; 7:45) is an interesting if brief look at the challenges the production faced by having to cover such a broad expanse of time.


• A Conversation with Nic Pizzolatto and T Bone Burnett (1080p; 10:00) is an engaging discussion about Burnett's music.


• Deleted Scene (1080p; 2:58) is from Episode 3, Scene #29.

Disc Two

• Deleted Scenes

  Episode 5 Scene #10 (1080p; 00:49)

  
  

  Episode 5 Scene #13 (1080p; 2:18)

  
  

  Episode 5 Scene #22 (1080p; 2:02)

  
  

  Episode 6 Scene #8 (1080p; 00:42)

Disc Three

• Finale Extended Cut (1080p; 1:23:26)


• Deleted Scenes

  Episode 7 Scene #1 (1080p; 5:15)

  
  

  Episode 7 Scene #6 (1080p; 3:43)

  
  

  Episode 8 Scene #18 (1080p; 6:47)

  
  

  Episode 8 Scene #73/74 (1080p; 5:14)

True Detective: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This third season of True Detective probably intentionally harkens back to some elements that worked especially well in the series' first, acclaimed season. Ali is hugely compelling as a character seen over the course of several decades, but even the visceral qualities he brings to his portrayal of Wayne Hays can't completely obfuscate the fact that the mystery at the center of this piece has a somewhat hackneyed feel to it. The cast is filled with some impressive supporting performances, though, and my hunch is those who really liked the first season of True Detective but who weren't quite as enthusiastic about the second season may well feel that this year is at least a halting return to form. Technical merits are solid, and True Detective: The Complete Third Season comes Recommended.