Three excellent police-homicide stories which live up to and even exceed the vision of the Coen brothers original Fargo film
Three 10-part police-homicide stories, set in the northern US state of Minnesota and the nearby North Dakota city of Fargo. The Coen's originally set their 90s film, Fargo, away from the corrupting influence of big cities, in order to emphasise the strength & moral qualities of individual character, painting heroes & villains in the primary colours of a western, with a touch of surrealism. Although the Coens only act as consulting producers in the tv series, these three stories live up to their original vision, and have the writing, cast, and production values worthy of a long film.
The first season is the closest to the film. Allison Tolman is smart female cop, Solverson, and Martin Freeman's weak, domestic murderer has similar rustic quirks to William H Macy. However, Billy Bob Thornton dominates the action as the brilliant and truly menacing freelance hitman, Malvo.
Season 2, set in 1979, tells the story of the mostly malign influence of the larger world and new, feminist values on three northern families, who still retain traces of the old pioneer spirit. The Larsson-Solverson family of policemen are the most traditional: the men are honest, stout-hearted, hard-working officers of the law, and the wives are still responsible for cooking and raising children. (But we know from Season 1 that the bright young daughter will grow up to be an inspired chief of police.)
The Gerhardts are a self-made family of rural German mafia. When their patriarch suffers a stroke, his wife takes charge to meet the threat of a Kansas City takeover. However, their hippie grand-daughter secretly undermines her family by sleeping with the enemy, and their most effective gunman is a native American, increasingly disgruntled at being treated as a 2nd class citizen.
Blumquist is a traditional, hard-working butcher who dreams of children and buying his boss's shop. However, his Cosmopolitan-obsessed, beautician wife, Kirsten Dunst, secretly uses contraceptives and spends the family savings on a seminar to `fully actualise her potential'. In this somewhat anti-feminist drama, these qualities are linked with a broader moral blindspot and a blackly comic gift for conscience-free mayhem.
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