While HBO’s True Detective season 1 was one of the most acclaimed crime dramas of the 2010s, it wasn’t until 2020’s Stephen King adaptation that the show’s darkest promise would be fulfilled. One of the reasons that 2014’s True Detective season 1 was so acclaimed and influential was its time-twisting storytelling, with the plot of the series spanning 17 years across two timelines. Thanks to this innovative approach, viewers got to see how investigating the shadowy elites behind a series of ritualistic killings unraveled the lives of Woody Harrelson’s Marty Hart and Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle.
Another reason the series was such a hit was its casting. While McConaughey’s history of Southern Gothic crime thrillers is legendary, in 2014, it was an inspired move to cast the rom-com stalwart against type as a cold-blooded nihilist, and it was equally smart to cast Cheers breakout star and screen goofball Harrelson as the deceitful, dishonest Hart. The many, many shows that borrowed from HBO’s True Detective season 1 formula in the years that followed often replicated this technique, casting A-list stars against type as hardened detectives.
From Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown to Amanda Seyfried in Long Bright River, there are innumerable examples of acclaimed prestige crime dramas that center on major stars playing against type. However, there is one more element of True Detective’s season 1 success that none of its competitors ever really managed to replicate. This was the same element that True Detective itself could never truly embrace in its follow-up seasons, and it’s an element that wasn’t effectively utilized until 2020’s Stephen King adaptation, The Outsider.
The Outsider Finally Fulfilled True Detective Season 1’s Horror Promise
With its endless nods to Thomas Ligotti, Robert W. Chambers’ short story collection The King in Yellow, and even HP Lovecraft, True Detective season 1 was steeped in horror lore and tropes. Its sweaty southern gothic setting, the paranoid, leering camerawork, Cohle’s lengthy diatribes about the entropic nature of time and reality itself, all pointed toward a particularly dark brand of Lovecraftian supernatural horror.
The original show only hinted at this Lovecraftian supernatural stuff, whereas 2020’s The Outsider was explicitly a paranormal horror show. Maybe the most blatant nod in True Detective season 1 came in the form of cryptic references to Carcosa, a fictional lost city from Ambrose Bierce’s 1886 short story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa.”
These references led a lot of viewers to theorize that the show’s ultimate season 1 villain wouldn’t be mere human criminals, but rather some sort of esoteric monster that turned the series into a paranormal horror show. Everything from the ’90s classic The X-Files to Supernatural had already blended horror elements with police procedurals, so this wouldn’t be unheard of.
However, True Detective was never quite willing to take that leap. In the show’s season 1 ending, which was viewed as a cop-out by not a few reviewers at the time, viewers are provided with some reassuringly straightforward answers to the murky, existential questions brought up in earlier episodes, and the show’s true antagonist is nothing more than a very mortal human villain.
In contrast, while nowhere near as silly and campy as the Supernatural-inspired Lucifer, 2020’s The Outsider pulled off the tricky achievement of introducing straight-up paranormal plot elements to an otherwise grounded crime thriller. Based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King from 2018, The Outsider has a premise that would be legitimately irresistible for any crime thriller fan.
Jason Bateman’s small town Little League coach, Terry Maitland, is arrested for an unspeakable crime, and Ben Mendelsohn’s detective Ralph Anderson is confident he’s got his man. Numerous eyewitness accounts place Maitland at the scene of the crime, there are piles of DNA evidence, and his blood samples even match the victim’s clothing. There’s just one problem. Maitland has not only got a rock-solid alibi, but there is also surveillance video footage of him three states away while the crime took place.
The Outsider’s True Detective Influence Is Ironic Thanks To Stephen King
Without giving away the show’s entire plot, suffice it to say that The Outsider’s story only works because Stephen King leans into the outright supernatural horror that made his most famous novels hits. Like It: Welcome to Derry, this HBO series is unafraid of turning a corner into full-blown horror, something True Detective never had the confidence to pull off despite its hints.
What makes this ironic is the fact that King’s own work was one of many big influences on True Detective season 1, only for the author to then write a book that became an HBO show that is, itself, heavily influenced by True Detective season 1. To be fair to the creators of the HBO adaptation, pretty much every prestige crime drama since True Detective season 1 owes at least something to the style of the series.
2018’s acclaimed Gillian Flynn adaptation Sharp Objects shares its sweltering Southern small-town setting with True Detective season 1, and is another show that plays with horror tropes without ever explicitly acknowledging anything supernatural. The Sinner is a similarly grim, bleak study of a troubled detective, while even the true-crime series Under the Banner of Heaven borrows the moody tone of True Detective, despite its entirely real story keeping far away from any supernatural or paranormal plot twists.
The Outsider’s Sequel and Prequel Are Even Closer To True Detective
Later seasons of True Detective never recaptured the success of the show’s debut outing, although the show came closest when it embraced its weirder, more horror-adjacent elements. While shows like Netflix’s Mindhunter borrowed season 1’s heavy atmosphere of dread but dropped the supernatural implications, True Detective seasons 3 and 4 were met with much stronger reviews than 2015’s season 2 precisely because they hinted at something strange and dark under the show’s grounded surface.
Ironically enough, The Outsider’s predecessor and follow-up were even closer in tone to True Detective season 1 since, outside of the 2018 book and its 2020 HBO, none of King’s Holly Gibney books or shows feature supernatural elements. 2017’s TV show Mr. Mercedes, as well as the later Holly Gibney books Holly and Never Flinch, are straightforward crime thrillers that get as dark as they can without ever featuring any outright supernatural horror, much like True Detective, which makes The Outsider the only show to fulfill season 1’s promise to date.
