New season of True Detective features new cast and storyline

True Detective blazes back with all-new characters, played by Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch, and a fresh mystery set in the scorched industrial wilderness of LA County.

Colin Farrell in the second season of True Detective. Lacey Terrell / HBO via AP

After a massive media build-up, True Detective delivered on its hype to become the breakout TV-drama hit of last year.

But the nitty-gritty niceties of the second season of this ­darker-than-noir thriller – which will feature an entirely new cast – have been mostly shrouded in secrecy.

This should not come as a surprise – in fact, the element of surprise will be crucial to the enjoyment of viewers.

It is certainly going to be hard to top the spectacle of a half-crazed Matthew McConaughey and a hair-trigger Woody Harrelson ripping through the desolation of southern Louisiana on the heels of a ritualistic killer – but with five Emmys on his shelf for the first season of True Detective, visionary crime author and executive producer Nic Pizzolatto has high hopes of recreating the magic for the second spin of his HBO anthology series, which returns to OSN tomorrow.

Yet by his own admission, he says he is done with the “buddy cop” dynamic, so to speak, and is now shining the spotlight on a foursome – three law-­enforcement officers and a career criminal – who get sucked into a maelstrom of conspiracy and betrayal after a bizarre murder in the scorched wilderness of California.

Will they find the truth – and their salvation? Even more importantly, how long will star, and former Hollywood hellraiser, Colin Farrell keep that depraved handlebar moustache?

The answers we crave are eight episodes away. For now, we’re looking forward to seeing some of Tinseltown’s heavyweights mix it up on the telly.

Farrell stars as Ray Velcoro, a burnt-out bagman of a detective torn between his corrupt bosses and a mobster who controls him – and the actor is loving it. True Detective is so much more than a mere whodunnit, the 39-year-old star of movies such as Horrible Bosses and Seven Psychopaths recently told Glamour magazine.

“That’s the great thing about the show – by episode three, you don’t give a [damn] who killed who,” he says. “It’s just a hook, a canvas, for everything else.”

Thrilled to be breaking free of his funny-man mould, Wedding Crashers star Vince Vaughn plummets into a dark night of the soul as Frank Semyon, a criminal and entrepreneur on the verge of losing his empire after his partner in a "legitimate enterprise" is murdered.

Reuniting with her Wedding Crashers co-star is Rachel McAdams as Ani Bezzerides, a granite-tough detective with the Ventura County Sheriff's Department, whose strait-laced ethics put her at odds with her colleagues.

“[Farrell and Vaughn] were great,” says McAdams, 36. “I think it’s going to be really cool. There are lots of plot developments and different webs to follow. I hope people like it – I loved doing it.”

Completing the core quartet is Friday Night Lights star Taylor Kitsch, 34, who plays Paul Woodrugh, a former military man with a troubled past, tarred by scandal, who's now a motorcycle officer for the California Highway Patrol.

While phenomenal first-­season director Cary Fukunaga has moved on, expect some hard-core visuals from the ­Taiwanese-born American film director Justin Lin, a veteran of the The Fast and the Furious series who will be directing the upcoming Star Trek Beyond sequel, which is expected to film in Dubai this year and is due out next year.

So what is True Detective really about?

"The forced intimacy of two people sharing a car, the intimacy of connections you don't get to decide," said Pizzolatto, who rarely gives interviews, when Vanity Fair asked him that very question recently. He further sprinkled his reply with a dusting of philosophical nihilism – which perhaps helps all of us to better understand the sort of mind that can craft a character like Rust Cohle.

“I write best about people whose souls are on the line, whatever we mean when we use that word,” he says. “I certainly don’t use it in a religious sense … We transpose meaning on to a possibly meaningless universe because meaning is personal. And that question of meaning or meaninglessness really becomes a question of: what do you love? Nothing? Then you’ve got a good shot at a meaningless existence.”

• Season two of True Detective debuts at 11pm today on OSN First HD

The burning question

The early buzz for True Detective's sophomore outing – based on previews of the first three episodes – has mostly positive. But can it possibly live up to last year's triumph? Here's what the critics said:

“It may be that season two’s greatness is still waiting for us, lying not so much in character and place, but in the satisfaction of a story and plot that fulfils its promises and ends even better than it begins.” — The Hollywood Reporter

“Brooding, sour and totally fascinating.” — Vulture.com

“It’s dense and it’s dark. If there were a quiz, you’d have to take notes. But the show breezes through the most important of all viewer tests: At the end of three episodes, you’re itching to see the fourth.” — New York Daily News

"The second season of True Detective is nearly as addictive as the first. It poses as a potboiler, but it's really an exercise in genre fused with existentialism." — Esquire

Rachel’s notebook

Playing detective Ani Bezzerides, the brassy female lead in True Detective, more than agreed with Rachel McAdams – in fact, she found it difficult to say goodbye to the character.

“I had a great time shooting it,” she says. “She was a really fun character to play. It was hard to say goodbye – it was the longest I spent with a character – about six months – since I did theatre. I’ll miss playing her.”

T Bone takes a fresh stab at tunes

Acclaimed musical director T Bone Burnett is back to infuse his atmospheric, melodic chills into the murderous proceedings.

"It's very, very different. It's not just Los Angeles – it's California. It's the desert," he told Entertainment Weekly. "Last year, it was a swampy kind of vibe. This year, it's an incredibly different landscape and different colours. It's barren and dangerous, more arid and electronic.

“[The music] sounds very electronic, but it’s just me and the guys playing instruments the way a machine would sound. There is original music that plays an important part in the story this season.”