After a wonky second season, the new cast of True Detective wants you to know it's going back to its roots.

The first season of True Detective, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, was nominated for five Primetime Emmy Awards, but the Vince Vaughn-led follow-up left fans bitterly disappointed.

"I can't get into real specifics, but I think it does move a little bit in the direction of season one," actor Jon Tenney told Observer earlier this year. "A little bit more maybe than season two."

For its third outing, writer/director Nic Pizzolatto has crafted the story of an Arkansas police detective (Mahershala Ali) whose connection to a sinister missing persons case spans decades.

Now, at a media Q&A, Pizzolatto and Ali have offered some new nuggets on the series which they are currently filming in the Ozark Mountains, which Pizzolatto says "embodies certain journeys" that the show's characters take.

"The mystery of the deep woods. The fog over the mountains. The rivers. The water. The sense of scale when you get out to some of this nature. Also, what the buildings say about the lives behind them," Pizzolato said, according to local newspaper The Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. "So I feel like people will see it as an extension of character, something that embodies characters' emotional journeys while influencing those journeys."

A media announcement from the Arkansas Economic Development Commission states that, "The third instalment of the drama series tells the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks, a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods."

"Sometimes we found things that seem to come straight out of the imagination, like this particular house that I don't want to go into it too much because of spoilers, but once we found it we couldn't believe it existed," Pizzolatto said of filming in the area in which he attended graduate school. "It was almost exactly what I had written, and it needed to be very specific."

"Everywhere you point the camera here is treasure," he added.

Ali also spoke about filming in the area the season is set, saying, "It would have been a disservice to the story not to shoot in the Ozarks, in Fayetteville, in Arkansas, because it's such a character in the story."

He revealed how he has spent time getting to know the "the vibe of the area" in Fayetteville.

"My character would not move or operate the same way if he was in New York," he said. "I've given myself permission to go slower even if they want me to speed up a bit. You end up essentially aligning yourself with the frequency of the pace. And that's how something will resonate as being truthful or not."