A recommendation on X has pushed the 2016 crime drama Quarry back into view, with one user telling fans of True Detective and The Wire to watch it now. The eight-episode series is streaming on NOW TV and HBO Max, and episodes can also be bought on Apple TV.

User @sonnysehra called Quarry a must-watch for viewers who like True Detective and The Wire, describing it as a story about a Vietnam War veteran in 1970s Memphis, Tennessee, forced into work as a hitman. The post also argued that the show was cancelled after one season because nobody was watching it, calling it a masterpiece that had more potential.

The attention lands on a show that has long carried a cult reputation among those who found it. Quarry holds a 78 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and comments from viewers range from praise that it is “one of the greatest shows I've ever seen” to disappointment that it got only one season. One viewer said season one was among the best they had watched in a while, while another said it sits “way up there with the first season of True Detective.”

What gives the series its edge is the way it plants Logan Marshall-Green’s Lloyd McKinnon “Mac” Conway Jr. in 1972, after his service in Vietnam, and then refuses to let him come home clean. Mac is greeted with hostility from the public, struggles to secure employment, is haunted by wartime trauma and is drawn into contact with dubious characters. Jodi Balfour, Damon Herriman, Edoardo Ballerini, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Aoibhinn McGinnity, Mustafa Shakir and Peter Mullan also appear in the programme.

Based on a series of novels by Max Allan Collins, Quarry was always built with a larger world in mind, which is part of why its one-season run still stings for fans. One viewer who had read the first five original Quarry books said the show was very good, though “extremely loosely based,” while another argued that it plays more like a prequel and shifts details from the books, including aspects of Mac’s wife.

That split between admiration and criticism helps explain why the series has lingered. One critic dismissed it sharply, saying neither the writers, director nor actors understood the Vietnam era and calling it a waste of time. But the louder reaction around the show is the regret that it disappeared just as it was finding its footing. For viewers who are now discovering it through the wire of social media, the answer to whether Quarry is worth the time seems to be yes — and the real frustration is that there is no second season waiting afterward.