True Detective doesn't have a problem. Other people do.

The second season of the show (Sundays, HBO Canada, 9 p.m. and on-demand) reaches its fourth episode this weekend and, with an eight-hour series, that's a crucial point. Already, in the third episode – look away now if you don't want info – there has been a subtle shift in tone. Mainly, the injection of a morbid camp quality that will probably end up being more disturbing than it is leavening.

Still, True Detective irritates and perplexes many viewers and some critics. The three main cop figures and mobster Frank (Vince Vaughn) are unremittingly anchored in gloom, all of them troubled, probably unhinged. That's an issue. And the murder mystery at the show's core is about finding out who killed a corrupt, sleazebag city official. Who would care about finding a guilty party? That's another issue.

Story continues below advertisement

While there have been positive reviews, there has also been a cascade of negative reaction. Here are some examples – "relentless in both its darkness and pretensions," "a gorgeous but hollow plunge into the depths of man's brutality against man," "woefully devoid of humour" and "even the pretentiousness seems turned up a notch, and that's a difficult feat considering season one's Nietzschean 'Time is a flat circle' yammering." Those phrases are used by critics, not viewers spewing their discomfort.

The series has been unfairly maligned because, I think, there remains a lingering inability to accept that television storytelling can be free of any uplifting message or moments. Heaven forbid that we are asked to contemplate nihilism. It's as if the entire viewing audience were a giant reading group of ladies of delicate sensibility who could not possibly be engaged by a narrative lacking a feel-good factor. They'd get the vapours.

It's also interesting that U.S. critics fall back on "pretentious" to describe bleakness. One supposes it's just in the DNA of the U.S. culture to react to gloom as a grandiose affectation.

And it is redundant, I think, to claim True Detective has a "woman problem," as several critics suggest. This, too, is an instinctive, unthinking reaction. It's rooted in a very American and retro idea that all popular entertainment is created by committee to please the widest possible audience. On premium cable, that isn't the case. If True Detective is sometimes bracing in its depiction of the sexist, misogynist male view, that is part of its essential pessimism.

It is to the great credit of HBO that creator Nic Pizzolatto has the freedom to avoid likeable characters and uplifting moments until he feels like weaving them into the fabric of the narrative, if he does at all. The first season, remember, was in the end about encountering the darkest side of human nature, embracing cynicism and then transcending it. "If you ask me, the light's winning," Rust Cohle said at the end.

Predicting a positive turn in the conclusion to the second season of True Detective would be a fool's game. It is about appalling people surrounded by appallingly damaged people.

There was an injection of what many see as David Lynch-style surrealism in episode three. No, Ray (Colin Farrell) wasn't dead. He was in some limbo where Conway Twitty's version of The Rose was being sung at him by a bad cabaret singer and his dad was sneering at him. Of course, Ray is, to a large degree, dead already. The tiny instances of flinty camaraderie with Ani (Rachel McAdams), another character so numbed as to be emotionally inert, are rare affirmatory moments.

Story continues below advertisement

There was also a nonchalant visit to the home of Mayor Chessani, in search of connections to the murdered Caspere. Ani and Paul (Taylor Kitsch) met the mayor's trophy wife, a figure of such confident cynicism that you think she's just the sort of person to run a major Hollywood studio. Which might be the point. That's the morbid camp part.

There's very little light breaking through the darkness so far. And if you have a problem with that on True Detective, you're not alone, but you're wrong.

All times ET. Check local listings.