Why the True Detective Season Two Casting is Brilliant

By Brigid McCuen on September 29, 2014

There has been a lot of buzz in entertainment news recently about one of television’s most favored shows, True Detective.

This past week, the crime fiction series released the names of the lead characters for Season Two. It is on track to feature Vince Vaughn and Colin Farrell, who will play a compromised detective and a career criminal.

This news left a lot of fans outraged, mainly because the pair is considered to be of lower caliber than Detective’s previous leads, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. However, I personally believe this was a clever strategy by HBO that will maximize viewership for the upcoming season.

The show works in an anthology format, and recycles its characters and storyline each season, which is an effective marketing strategy in itself. The ever-changing details keep Detective buzz alive on social media and on TV. In fact, the series is one of the most followed online, with over 12,000 Twitter followers and 21,000 Instagram followers.

image via screenrant.com

The first season featured eight one-hour episodes. This is where Detective’s first marketing strategy came into play, and it was highly successful.

Its marketing approach parallels the mood of the show – secretive, intriguing – which makes the Detective experience a holistic and satisfying one.

For example, each Season One episode was tagged with a slightly ambiguous Twitter hashtag that related to the plot line so that viewers could only be subject to the show’s media coverage if they searched the specific phrase.

Another indirect strategy was the timing of the show’s release: Season One premiered during Oscar season, which significantly helped boost its reputation, as McConaughey was in the running for Best Actor (which he ended up winning). The show received high ratings, and viewers everywhere anticipated the return of Season Two.

Now that there’s so much grumbling about the new leads, the show is on the forefront of the entertainment news sector again and causing even more buzz. In my opinion, any publicity is good publicity when it comes to TV shows because the more that people are talking about it, the more viewers are likely to tune into the season premiere out of excitement, curiosity, or both.

Detective’s casting of such controversial lead actors cemented the series’ presence in the media and on entertainment websites for weeks to come, and it’s more than likely that fans will want to see how the casting pans out in the upcoming season.

In light of such a successful first run, it will be interesting to see what other marketing strategies the show employs as Season Two draws nearer. There is no set premiere date, but the series will be shooting this fall.

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