Has there ever been a more disappointing second series of television than True Detective season two? After the mercurial energy, invention and philosophical boldness of season one, anticipation could hardly have been higher for the second season – despite misgivings over the casting – and yet when the credits rolled after our very first outing with Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch, it was already clear something had gone terribly wrong – and not just in the fictional town of Vinci, California, whose decrepit bleakness hardly matched the baleful bayou setting of the first season.

After a stumbling, convoluted start, things got worse with the cheapest of cliffhanger endings to the second episode. It was leaden with, at times, impenetrable plotting and an increasingly inert performance from Vaughn who looked like he was slowly de-evolving on screen. That the final episode was a bumper 90 minutes long seemed to sum up the whole season’s misjudgments and hubris. It was so bad that it actually went some way towards spoiling the memory of the first series (although some disagreed).

Surely the only answer was for show-runner and writer Nic Pizzolatto to back away from his creation, take some time out and come up with something completely different, something as striking and original in its own way as his first season. He did just that and began writing the long-in-the-works Perry Mason project, which some suggested would essentially be True Detective season three.

But on Monday news came that we needed to brace ourselves for a potential third season of True Detective, with Pizzolatto teaming up with David Milch, the co-creator of NYPD Blue and Deadwood. The new season has yet to be greenlit. But if it is coming back, here are three major problems it has to fix to be worth giving another chance:

Casting

‘See, time really is a flat circle’: Matthew McConaughey, left, and Woody Harrelson from True Detective season one. Photograph: Michele K. Short/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The internet worked itself up into a lather last time around with inspired and/or absurd potential pairings for the second series – Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, David Bowie and Bing Crosby. But the truth is that probably the only casting that would genuinely stir up enthusiasm for season three would be to bring Matthew McConaughey back as Rust Cohle – and perhaps Woody Harrelson as Marty Hart, too.

I must stress that I’m not saying this is necessarily a good idea. All I’m saying is it might be the only way to persuade viewers to make the leap of faith to give the show another try. As I recall, Rust and Marty ended the first season both alive and relatively well, with Rust (in a moment that annoyed me) seeming to abandon his nihilism to remark: “The light’s winning!” The third season could pick up a few years later, or examine an earlier part of Cohle’s life, or return to the narrative experimentation of the first season by exploring some of the same events from a different perspective. Again, I’m not saying these are good ideas … they’re just not unthinkably bad.

Surprisingly, McConaughey – for whom the show was a key element of his transformation into a critical darling – seems keen to return, having said as recently as December: “If that thing was written well and it came up again, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.”

The script

‘Do you have any bandwidth I could borrow?’: Vince Vaughn in True Detective season two. Photograph: Lacey Terrell/AP

HBO boss Michael Lombardo took the blame for season two’s problems, saying he had rushed Pizzolatto to finish the second batch of scripts. “I set him up. To deliver, in a very short time frame, something that became very challenging to deliver,” he said. The opaque and pretentious mutterings of season two, especially for poor Vaughn’s character (such as “Some people say it’s not the size of the boat but rather the motion of the ocean. Well guess what, Ray? I can’t even swim. Never even had a bath,” and the immortal “There’s no bandwidth for that right now”) made the whole thing mind-boggling. The tight timeframe – there were only 15 months between season one finishing and season two reaching our screens – can’t have helped. But for me, season two also raised the question of whether Pizzolatto knew what he had got so right in season one, since he failed to repeat any of those achievements of characterisation, theme or plotting he managed first time round. That’s a worry.

The team

‘Did you see the state of True Detective season two? You better pour me another one’: Deadwood. Photograph: c.HBO/Everett / Rex Features

Part of the appeal of True Detective season one was in director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s luminous shots of the Louisiana landscape, thin roads stretching out between the ever-encroaching water and the glowering sky. Fukunaga abandoned ship for season two, replaced by a much less distinctive team of journeymen who seemed content instead to flood the screen with darkness whenever possible. Fukunaga has moved on to further critical acclaim with the west African civil war drama Beasts of No Nation, and it seems unlikely he could be persuaded to return.

Milch’s involvement is intriguing, however. Although Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue both represent distinct stages in the evolution of the cop show that now make them seem dated and conventional, it’s possible Pizzolatto could do with a bit of traditional script-doctoring and someone to stand up to his self-indulgence. Deadwood demonstrates that Milch can create something distinctive and original, although I must say I cringe at the thought of its macho and violent aesthetic being applied to a show already brimming with those qualities.

Neither Pizzolatto nor Milch is expected to be the show-runner for season three, suggesting Pizzolatto has been forced to cede at least some creative control. How he will take that is an open question – he reportedly fell out with Fukunaga and some have even suggested a dislikable film director in season two was written to caricature his colleague.

But it will be a stretch to win people back, and maybe it’s simply time for Pizzolatto and HBO to let it go and move on to something else entirely. “There’s no such thing as forgiveness,” Rust Cohle is quoted as saying in season one. “People just have short memories.” Not quite this short.