For the past decade and a half, HBO has been premier amongst the premium package channels.
As of late, their two highest rating dramas have been Game of Thrones based on the fantasy series written by George R. R. Martin and True Detective, HBO’s latest starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.
While True Detective has only had a single season, Game of Thrones has a few years under its belt. Game of Thrones brings some nostalgia to the fantasy genre as the Tolkien film adaptations of Lord of the Rings did to fans at the turn of the century, yet it seems as if the show has relied on the same formulaic principles most cut throat crime television dramas have over the past decade (a la Sons of Anarchy, The Shield, The Wire, etc.).
Once you look past the period aesthetics, Game of Thrones cyclically delivers on some fantasy aspect in the most minuscule of ways and then straight to the betrayal, the debauchery, the violence, and, of course, HBO’s ace in the sleeve, female nudity.
Honestly, it seems as if every episode begins in the wake of someone’s death from the last episode, a grandiose scene of royal decadence, medieval gore, dragon eggs, some mention of an even greater evil outside of the world of the characters than the evil perpetrated by the characters themselves, dragon eggs (i.e. a lady’s breasts) ad infinitum. George R. R. Martin has copped the crime drama formula and applied it to fantasy. Through the perspective of literary history, the genre has been revered for its obsessive creation of different languages and entire worlds, this man has dumbed it down to the level of social and political interactions of another hedonistic group of heretics that we are used to seeing as gangsters or Italians in film and television.
Thankfully HBO didn’t entirely drop the ball like they did for the year after The Sopranos wrapped up. True Detective is a murder mystery southern gothic masterpiece. Set in Louisiana, the show follows two homicide detectives (McConaughey and Willie Nelson’s old pal, Woody Harrelson) as they set out to solve the satanic ritual murder of a young girl. Without giving too much away, the show falls into classic murder mystery set ups such as flashbacks, existential despair, and good cop bad cop routines; but also pushes these set ups into an elevated state of self-awareness through clear development of the characters and by capturing a certain ‘psychosphere’ of Louisiana dimness through cinematography. Also, the show tends to shy away from obsessing over mystifying the murderer, as so many mystery shows tend to do these days. At its heart, the show remains a study on the relationship of the two detectives and their development over the course of the show as friends and partners.
Perhaps I do have an inclination towards Detective because I live in Louisiana; its merits, however, rest with good storytelling, unlike that sword toting exploitation gangster piece set in Middle Earth 2.0.
-Mortimer Baxtar