NEW YORK (AP) – The second season of “True Detective” kicked off last week, and it got right down to business: The bizarre murder of a city boss in the wicked wasteland of Vinci, California, has put responding law officers in a turf war escalated by their shared antipathy.
Prime among them is Vinci Police Detective Ray Velcoro (played by Colin Farrell, who co-stars with Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch, plus Vince Vaughn as the city’s reigning mobster). Ray is a lawman who has lost his moral compass, his marriage and his son. He hasn’t signaled defeat, but seems close, the kind of guy who responds to the taunt, “You used to be a hard man,” by growling, “I’m tired.”
With the season’s second episode premiering Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT on HBO, Farrell, sporting his Dublin-born bonhomie, is game to talk about the series and being a true actor.
“Ray is not the kind of guy I would find myself wanting to spend too much time with,” he allows. “But I had a fairly deep sympathy for him from the first time I met him. He can’t find his way back to that place where life still held some potential to be noble.”
As before, this season’s “True Detective” springs from a homicide that mainly serves as a narrative hook, says Farrell, “to draw viewers in, and to force the characters into each other’s lives in ways they never imagined at the outset.”