What is True Detective about?
An American anthology police detective series utilizing multiple timelines in which investigations seem to unearth personal and professional secrets of those involved, both within or outside the law.
Bleak, atmospheric dread slowly builds as detectives pursue a case that unravels their own dark secrets.
Suspenseful. A full-attention watch that takes its time. Emotionally it is devastating.
Streaming on Max.
True Detective parents guide
For a TV-MA, this one goes further: strong sex and nudity. Beyond that, strong violence and frequent strong language.
- Scare
- Mildly scary
- A few tense or eerie moments.
- Jump scares
- None noted
- Gore
- Light gore
- Some blood or injury, briefly.
- Violence
- Strong violence
- Violence is frequent or intense.
- Sex and nudity
- Strong
- Strong means explicit or repeated sex, extended nudity, or sexual assault shown on screen, attempted or completed, even partly off screen. Any one of these is enough.
- Language
- Strong
- Frequent strong profanity or slurs.
How we rate: an AI reads what is known about each title and tags it 0 to 3; we check the tags against a hand-rated set and correct them by hand when readers tell us. Estimates, not a scene-by-scene review. Spot a mistake? Tell us.
Three questions
- Is True Detective scary?
- Only a little. True Detective has a few tense moments, nothing that follows you to bed.
- How gory is True Detective?
- Light gore and strong violence.
- What is True Detective rated, and is it OK for kids?
- Rated TV-MA, and it earns it: strong sex and nudity, strong violence, and frequent strong language. Not one for kids.
Cast and crew
Created byNic Pizzolatto, Issa López
StarringJodie Foster, Kali Reis, Fiona Shaw, Finn Bennett, Isabella Star LaBlanc, John Hawkes
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True Detective is on our Slow burns, Whodunits, Noir and neo-noir, Anthology series and 2010s lists.
More like this feeling
Prompts we typed into CouchRot, and the lists that share its tags.
- “a thriller with a twist, no spoilers”
- “a movie that will make me cry”
- “funny but not stupid, under two hours”
Lists with the same feel: Tearjerkers.
Five more like True Detective
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Uses the TMDB API; not endorsed or certified by TMDB. Intensity, content, tone and pace tags are CouchRot's own.