HBO’s ‘True Detective’ strong on same night as Matthew McConaughey Golden Globe win

Sunday really proved itself to be a great night for Matthew McConaughey. Not only did the actor win a Golden Globe for his role in “Dallas Buyers’ Club,” but he also saw his new HBO series “True Detective” (in which he serves as an executive producer) get off to a pretty great start.

Overall, the show started off with a viewership total of 2.3 million viewers. While that may sound small now in comparison to some other dramas on cable right now, take a minute to digest this. “Game of Thrones” started on the network with an audience of 2.2 million viewers, and “The Newsroom” started with a total of 2.1 million. We don’t know if this show will ever get to the same sort of following as the fantasy epic, mostly because police dramas have a pretty limiting audience. But, we imagine that the network would be pretty thrilled if it kept up these ratings all season long, and they’d even renew it for another season if everyone wanted to continue for a little while longer.

What we are mostly interested in is this: Will McConaughey want to keep himself attached to a TV show for a long time? It was only a couple of years ago that he was thought of as the actor guy who liked to take his shirt off all the time; but, he has since completely reinvented himself as a serious actor, and his Golden Globe win last night was proof that he really could get all sorts of juicy offers coming in his direction.

Photo: HBO