HBO’s new flagship drama sees Woody Harrelson and Matthew Mcconaughey hunt a serial killer in Louisiana. Apart from a few viral emails, a website, an eerie trailer and a brand new clip, there hasn’t been much in the way of information about the new anthology series.

True Detective

But that hasn’t stopped people getting excited. It could be HBO’s stellar small screen name; it could be the intriguing marketing approach, or it could be the on-screen star quality, either way, we struggling to keep our ‘reasons we’re excited list’ down to 5. We weren’t allowed to do 9,339.

Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are electric

It doesn’t take long for the first episode of True Detective to grab you, and that’s in no small part down to the performances of McConaughey and Harrelson. Their charisma is palpable. “Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson should star in everything, always--that’s how mesmerizing they are,” said The Chicago Sun Times’ Lori Rackl, and it’s hard to disagree.

New blood behind the scenes

While it’s nice to see Terrance Winter and Tim Van Patten scroll up on the credits after 50 minutes of premium TV, it’s also nice to see some new ideas come to the fore. True Detective is created by Nic Pizzolatto, a novelist with scant experience in telvision, and directed by Cary Fukunaga, who is making the move into TV after working in film.

It’s HBO. They did The Sopranos and The Wire

You do the maths. AMC have enjoyed a purple patch with Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Walking Dead, and while they’re all brilliant shows in their own right, there’s something inexplicably comforting about seeing the HBO logo come up as you soak in that faint hum that accompanies the infamous TV noise greets your eyes. It’s HBO.

We can’t work anything out, yet

Assuming you’ve just seen the trailer, and you’re not Sherlock Holmes, then it’s pretty safe to assume you’ve got no idea what will unravel as True Detective’s story is told. The trailer sees McConaughey both investigating and investigated, and while we know the story unfolds over 17 years, exactly how that comes about it just one of the things we can’t wait to find out.

It looks fantastic

It’s pretty easy to get people excited with a trailer: just throw together some choice shots, overdub some key pieces of dialogue, and you’re set. But there’s enough about True Detective to suggest the production values demonstrated in both the trailer and the latest clip are here to stay; sweeping shots of Alligator Country interweaved with the creepy aesthetics of the Blair Witch-esque twig constructions and dolls.

The season premiere of True Detective is on Sunday, January 12th at 9 PM.