Hello and welcome to Best of Shows, a weekly conversation about the biggest things happening on the small screen and a guide to what shows are and are not worth your time.

I'm Kristen Baldwin TV critic at Entertainment Weekly.

I'm joined by my fellow EW critic and TV junkie, Darren Franich. Hi, Darren. Hi, Kristen. How's it going? Oh, pretty good. What's up? Well, let me bring it down a little bit, okay? It's time for us to talk about what's new, and of course, the biggest new show of the week is the return of HBO's

True Detective, the crime anthology

series, just returned on January 13th on HBO.

Now, Kristen, we all remember the first season of True Detective.

It was 2014.

It was a tense thriller about Lady Antlers and time being a flat circle.

We also probably all remember the second

season of True Detective from 2015, slightly less beloved miniseries about Colin Farrell's

mustache and the water stains at Vince Vaughn's ceiling. Kristen, I have some good news and some bad

news about the new season of True Detective. Good news is it is much more the true detective that we all remember.

This is a time-splitting crime investigation drama.

Mahershula Ali plays a detective.

We first meet him in 1980 investigating the kidnapping, apparently, of two children.

We meet Mahershula Ali's character again in 1990, where he's being asked questions about that investigation.

Would you believe, Kristen, still one more time zone to wrap your head around, because we also meet him in 2015 when he is a great-looking older man who is also being asked more questions about

all the stuff that happened in 1980 and 1990. Kristen, the first two hours between detective

just aired on Sunday. They are the strongest hours of the season, I think. It really does

sort of draw you into this Ozark setting.

It's very moody.

It takes about, you know, 20 minutes for someone to say, oh, maybe we should go to a place

...