True Detective

 

The signs around me are saying we have moved. What that means is anyone’s guess but reality is extraordinarily strange now.

 

 

 

‘Brand New Location. Previously Up The Road.’

 

 

Over the last few days I’ve been getting an urge to write about True Detective. In short it’s a Top Ten Listverse of my favourite True Detective alternative reality movies and TV shows. And a book. Actually a Top 11 as I forgot ‘The X Files’ in the original publication.

I’m intrigued with the interaction of consciousness and probably more accurately subconsciousness and movies and TV shows. True Detective would seem to be an archetype of some sort. Even in the mainstream movies and TV, the True Detective is a constant – Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Columbo, Kojak, Jim Rockford, Cagney and Lacey, Miss Marple, Jane Tennison etc.

Yesterday, I came across this article written by a Dream expert concerning ‘The OA’ TV series who sees Dreamland as an alternative reality and I’m seeing the movies and TV shows more and more in the same light.

Click Psychology Today.com.

And this section from the article jumped out at me :

‘With the team from “The OA” I never felt even a whisper of this sentiment. On the contrary, they totally get it. They get it that dreams are portals to other dimensions of ourselves and the cosmos. They get it that artists have a special power to open people’s minds and expand their sense of what’s possible. They get it that this reality, the world in which we are living right now, is in desperate need of reconnecting via dreams and other altered states of consciousness with existential truths we’ve always known but have somehow lost, or had taken away from us.’

TRUE DETECTIVE LISTVERSE

11 : MIRAGE / DURANTE LA TORMENTA – Nico Lacarte.

 

 

Nico Lacarte / Inspector Leyra is a detective who dies as a boy in one reality but is saved by time travelling weirdness and then criss crosses different realities and grows up to be a detective. And is connected by ‘Interdimensional’ Time storms.

 

10: THE OA – Karim Washington.

In series 2 of the OA, Karim Washington was introduced into the show. He is a San Francisco private detective who innocently wishing to help, finds himself bewilderingly being dragged further and further into OZ where nothing is exactly what it seems. And ends up in a strange place beyond a strange place.

 

 

9: DARK CITY – Inspector Frank Bumstead.

In Dark City, Inspector Frank Bumstead when investigating a series of murders discovers that the reality in which he exists is a false reality created by ‘Archon’ types known as ‘The Strangers’ who manipulate reality for their own purposes.

 

 

 

8 : BLADE RUNNER – Rick Deckard.

In a dystopian future, Rick Deckard is an ex Los Angeles police officer who is forced back into his previous job as a Blade Runner where he would track down and kill bioengineered individuals known as ‘Replicants’.

 

 

7 : TWIN PEAKS – Agent Cooper.

FBI Agent Dale Cooper is sent to the town of Twin Peaks to investigate the murder of a high school student, Laura Palmer.

And finds himself being drawn into a whirlpool reality and a strange community of people and events.

 

 

6 : THE MEN IN BLACK – Agent J and Agent K.

Agent J and Agent K are agents of a secret organisation MiB that monitors and police alien activity on Earth. The title is taken from a name given to mysterious individuals who legend says turned up after people had alien contact and deter them from speaking out.

 

 

5 : TRUE DETECTIVE – Various.

I haven’t watched many of the episodes so I don’t profess to be an expert on the show but it would seem churlish to leave out True Detective from a True Detective list.

I’m not sure whether it is a true alternative reality but there are enough metaphysical undertones for it to be included.

 

 

4: THE X FILES- Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.

Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigate the weirder cases sent to the FBI. The series goes over a wide area of esoteric weirdness but over time its main focus became the Alien question.

 

 

 

3 : LIFE ON MARS / ASHES TO ASHES – Gene Hunt, Sam Tyler and Alex Drake.

Both TV series are set in alternative reality Police stations run by DCI Gene Hunt. Sam Tyler and Alex Drake are police officers who suddenly find themselves back in time in the new police station. And both are confused and bewildered and attempt to work out exactly what is happening. And again weird and wonderful things happen.

At the end of Ashes to Ashes, it is revealed that the police station is a form of Limbo or Bardo and has been created for police officers who have died violently and its purpose is to allow the individuals come to this realisation and move on to wherever they move onto.

Both series have a strong David Bowie link and are named after two of his songs.

 

 

2 : FRINGE – Olivia Dunham, Peter Bishop and Walter Bishop.

Fringe was one of the first shows that got me really thinking about the Silver Screen as a portal and a tool to open up or go deeper into consciousness. I binge watched it a few months before the MH370 crash and subsequent events indicated that it had been part of the process before MH370 for me.

Olivia Dunham, Peter Bishop and Walter Bishop are members of the ‘Fringe’ division of the FBI which investigated the unexplainable. And over the series they encountered the Observers, alternate timelines, parallel universes, nasty viruses and explored different themes such as the effects of drugs on consciousness. And a load more as well.

 

 

1 : DIRK GENTLY’S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY – Dirk Gently.

For me, it is the original book rather than the TV series. I bought the first book probably about 1990 long before I was interested in the themes the book touches on.

The Holistic Detective Agency, written by Douglas Adams, was set up by Dirk Gently as a private detective agency. But he uses syncromystic detective techniques to investigate the cases which mainly seem to involve searching for lost cats. Until he finds himself dealing with Prof Chronotis, an Electric Monk, time travel and an alien ghost who wanted to reverse time.
It’s wonderful.

“Thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic”.

There’s a sequel ‘The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul’ which is well worth reading as well.

 

 

 

That’s the scores on the doors for my True Detective list. There are a few others I could have included. And I recommend them all.

I suspect there is more to the True Detective than just an interesting character in a movie.

And there is more to movies than just movies. They do more than just make you think I believe.