TV review: Edgy series suffering second album blues

Rachel McAdams and Colin Farrell are among the new band members in season two of True Detective.

True Detective back but oddly less appetising than first outing.

As the last season of True Detective taught us: time is a flat circle. TV shows will end, and TV shows will return - for better or worse. This season is the difficult second album, and it's a lot harder to impress when you keep the band name, but change all the members. The anthology series has overhauled the cast, the story and the setting from the first season, taking us to a murky Los Angeles town, and picking apart an unsolved crime through the jaded eyes of those sworn to protect.

The episode itself spun a familiar web to the threads that we saw in the first season. It connected passages of time, tangential relations between people and their unsurprisingly dark pasts to create an even darker present. But something feels like it's missing. In the first season, McConaughey's electric performance as Rust Cohle contributed hugely to morphing him from bronzed rom com hunk to Oscar winner. This time, it's hard to ignore Colin Farrell andVince Vaughan's track record, and the inkling that they might be trying to True Detective-ify their careers. All I'm saying is, the poster for the last movie Vince Vaughan was in featured a giant bear wearing a suit.

Last season, Rust Cohle proudly proclaimed that he was a bad man, but there remained an underlying determination to let the light win. The characters of season two are shadier than a spam email from Nigeria. There's Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell), the corrupt cop with ties going deep into the dark side, and an explosive temper that saw him violently assault at least two people in the first episode. Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughan) is a career criminal, trying to go straight through some very wonky means.

Vince Vaughn as career criminal Frank Semyon.

Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) is dripping in bitterness, and unfortunately defined by her "daddy issues". Her name is short for Antigone. Joining the trio is Paul Woodrugh, played by Taylor Kitsch, a highway cop with a penchant for speeding and exchanging sex acts for pardons. They aren't a lovable bunch, but I'll admit that seeing them coalesce in the final minutes of the episode gave me a flicker of hope.

I won't go too much into the plot, but it is more dense than season one. There are double the amount of lead characters involved in a far more complicated case than "spooky serial killer on the loose". It's about money, corruption and fragile relationships holding up a town on the brink of collapse. The unsolved murder that brings our antiheroes together is no John Doe. True Detective has buried the bogeyman visions, and is driving the story 100 miles an hour down the freeway away from its predecessor.

The unique style of the show remains, deftly executed with some truly breathtaking moments. The washed out palette of browns and greys is peppered with reds, warning of the violence to come. There's a recognisable and unnerving aura that settles over every scene: angles are off, shots dwell for too many beats and jarring editing upsets the protracted pace. You're invited to peer into the shadows and let the pauses speak volumes. Frank Semyon advises his associate, "never do anything out of hunger - not even eating". After the premiere, I'm not going to admit that I'm starved for the next episode of True Detective like I was the first time round. Perhaps just a little peckish.