True Detective
HBO

Details regarding the second season of HBO's smash-hit series True Detective will be revealed soon, but in the meantime an HBO executive has revealed a few small details.

At the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, HBO programming president Michael Lombardo said: "The people we will cast will be well-known names, but [casting big names] wasn't our ambition.

"Great writing attracts great actors... Maybe people initially came for [season one stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson], but I think they stayed because the show was so compelling."

Rumours have suggested that the second season will star a trio of actors rather than McConaughey and Harrelson's brooding double act. It has also been suggested that women will play a much more pivotal role after the treatment of women proved a big point of contention in the first season.

Show creator Nic Pizzolatto said immediately after the first season's final episode that the second season would be about "hard women, bad men and the secret occult history of the United States transportation system."

Lombardo meanwhile praised Pizzolatto and the scripts he has read for the second season's first two episodes.

"The two scripts we have ... I hate to jinx it ... they are more exciting than the first season," he said. "[Pizzolatto is] an incredibly talented writer. And he's blown us away with the first two episodes."

True Detective season two will be released sometime in early 2015. If I were a betting man I'd say a casting announcement will be made around the time of the 2014 Emmy Awards(for which True Detective enjoyed numerous big nominations) on 25 August.