"The Long Bright Dark" is the series premiere of the anthology crime drama True Detective, which initially aired on HBO in the United States on January 12, 2014.

The episode introduces a pair of Louisiana State Police homicide detectives, Rustin "Rust" Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Martin "Marty" Hart (Woody Harrelson), as well as series regulars played by Michelle Monaghan, Michael Potts, and Tory Kittles.

Principal photography was initially scheduled to take place in Arkansas; however, Louisiana was ultimately preferred for its generous statewide tax incentives and unique landscape.

The initial broadcast of "The Long Bright Dark" drew 2.3 million viewers, becoming HBO's highest rated series premiere since the pilot episode of Boardwalk Empire.

Back at the station, Rust meets Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle (Jay O. Sanders), a minister from a powerful local family and the first cousin of the state governor.

Nic Pizzolatto, a writer and series creator, delved into fiction writing and published a novel, titled Galveston (2010), before being appointed as a screenwriter for AMC's The Killing the following year.

[2] "I'd always had plans from the first time I'd talked to an agent from Hollywood, I was going to ask how you break into this business, and particularly cable-TV writing, because in television the writer stays in control, which is what the concept of show runner is", he remembers.

[3] Pizzolatto's stint with The Killing provided him a glimpse of the inner workings of the television industry, but grew increasingly dissatisfied with the show's creative direction, eventually leaving the writing staff two weeks into the program's second season.

[2] Pizzolatto, impressed with the actor's performance in The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), originally assigned him the role of Martin Hart, but McConaughey offered "a really compelling argument" for portraying Rustin "Rust" Cohle.

[16] The initial location for principal photography for True Detective was Arkansas; however, Pizzolatto later opted to film in southern Louisiana to capitalize on generous statewide tax incentives and the area's distinctive landscape,[17] which he felt illustrated a striking paradox.

[19] The crew filmed exterior shots at a remote sugarcane field outside of Erath, Louisiana which, because it was partially burned, inspired a "moody and atmospheric" backdrop for corresponding scenes.

[20] Fukunaga recruited Adam Arkapaw, previously director of photography for Top of the Lake, as project cinematographer and employed minimalistic lighting for layering composition.

Tim Goodman from The Hollywood Reporter said Fukunaga develops "a beautiful, sprawling sense of place" in the premiere, and identified the ensemble and the writing, which he believed "undulates from effectively brash soliloquies to penetratingly nuanced moments carried by sparse prose", as two of its other most satisfying attributes.

[26] Willa Paskin of Slate described the episode as "creepy, gorgeous, unsettling, and searching" and noticed "a literary quality, an accretion of meaningful detail" within the show's narrative.

[27] The Daily Beast's Andrew Romano said the premiere, together with the former half of the season, compose "one of the most riveting and provocative series I've ever seen",[28] while Entertainment Weekly critic Jeff Jensen called it "an enthralling murder mystery about history, culture, and heroic character".

[29] The new drama, written by novelist Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, does something I wasn't sure was possible: By focusing on two vastly different detectives more than on the case they're investigating, it adds a fresh twist to the crowded cops-and-serial-killers genre Brian Lowry, reviewing for Variety, called "The Long Bright Dark" a "rich and absorbing" episode where True Detective immediately assumes a unique identity from other police procedurals, and wrote the cast ensemble consisted of "fine players on the periphery".

[31] Writing in USA Today, Robert Bianco felt McConaughey and Harrelson not only met, but occasionally even exceeded "enormously high" performance expectations of the "golden age of TV acting".

[32] David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle singled out the duo as being "in a class of their own",[33] and Los Angeles Times journalist Robert Lloyd thought the character work from the two men was of "a very high order".

[34] Sarah Rodman of The Boston Globe, though found the program's grim tone to be occasionally excessive, opined that the two men successfully engaged audiences enough to invest in the series with their performances.

Hale, despite commending the flashback narrative, believed the dialogue devolved into "a languid character study and a vehicle for long-winded exchanges about religion and responsibility that are writerly in the worst way.

"[37] Chris Cabin from Slant Magazine agreed that the writing too readily "defers to an earnest, rote view of bad religion", but wrote that Pizzolatto and Fukunaga "smartly embrace the pulpiness of their material".