True Detective seasons ranked by Rotten Tomatoes score

Chris Tilly
Jodie Foster in True Detective Night Country sits in a police station in her officer uniform.

If you’re wondering what the best season of the crime show is, here are all the True Detective seasons ranked by Rotten Tomatoes score.

True Detective Season 4 had big shoes to fill. It was the first that didn’t have writer Nic Pizzolatto pulling the strings. Instead, Mexican filmmaker Issa López took the creative reigns.

Critical reception was strong. With top-tier episodes and a stacked True Detective Night Country cast, it’s a worthy adversary to the previous episodes of the TV show.

Here’s where the latest sits among the best True Detective seasons on Rotten Tomatoes.

True Detective seasons ranked by Rotten Tomatoes score

The best True Detective seasons ranked by Rotten Tomatoes score:

  1. True Detective Season 4: 92%
  2. True Detective Season 1: 92%
  3. True Detective Season 3: 84%
  4. True Detective Season 2: 47%

Seasons 4 and 1 are tied at the time of writing but with recency bias it’s likely Season 4 will drop slightly over time. New TV shows tend to hit their peak close to release before more reviews come in later. For example, when Night Country was first released, it sat higher at 94%.

What are critics saying about True Detective Night Country?

Dexerto gave it five stars in our True Detective Night Country review, saying, “A story so dark shouldn’t be this much fun, but Night Country is a cracking whodunnit that will keep you guessing until the final few reels. It’s also the best True Detective since Season 1.”

The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Night Country pushes aside Pizzolatto’s trademark masculine brooding for a female-forward story that personalizes and internalizes the anthology’s typically convoluted plotting in a way that’s refreshing and frequently potent.”

The Evening Standard said, “This is excellent TV that conjures an atmosphere thicker than the polar ice cap, and bleaker than a polar night. Just make sure to wrap up warm.”

The crime series is consistently one of the best TV shows. Its reliable quality is exactly why True Detective Season 5 has been confirmed. While we wait for new episodes, find TV shows like True Detective here.

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About The Author

Chris Tilly is the TV and Movies Editor at Dexerto. He has a BA in English Literature, an MA in Newspaper Journalism, and over the last 20 years, he's worked for the likes of Time Out, IGN, and Fandom. Chris loves Star Wars, Marvel, DC, sci-fi, and especially horror, while he knows maybe too much about Alan Partridge. You can email him here: chris.tilly@dexerto.com.