Mild spoilers for season 5 follow.
I never watched the original, highly lauded Coen Brothers film Fargo until Noah Hawley’s television series of the same name first aired on Channel 4 here in the UK back in 2014. I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the Coens, having already watched The Hardsucker Proxy, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou previously. Yet I hadn’t seen Fargo.
Having just come off Breaking Bad, I was looking for something to replace it – and Fargo, the TV series, certainly filled that gap. Starring Martin Freeman, Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Tolman, and Colin Hanks, the show is set after the original movie’s events in Bemidji, Minnesota, as well as Duluth and Fargo, North Dakota. It follows a meek salesman pushed to the edge by his domineering wife and a childhood bully. While waiting at a local hospital, he encounters the malevolent drifter Lorne Malvo, who triggers a series of violent events. Like the film, it plays on the Minnesota “nice” stereotype, which is characterised by extreme politeness, emotional restraint, mild-mannered friendliness, and an intense aversion to open conflict.
The first season was absolutely excellent. It blended dark humour with drama, tension, and violence, making it very hard to stop watching. Only after watching season one did I watch the movie, and I must say, I kicked myself for not watching it earlier. I fully understood why Frances McDormand and her husband, Joel Cohen, won their respective Oscars for the film. It is a masterpiece of storytelling, and it will delight, thrill and make you laugh in equal measure.
The television series spawned four other series. I eagerly awaited and watched three of them religiously as soon as they were released on Channel 4, then moved to Netflix (and later Amazon Prime Video). The other two series were very good, but the third, while good, struggled to find its voice.
The fifth season has been available for quite some time (since 2023), but I never really got around to it. But since I get Amazon Prime at an educational discount, I sat down last weekend and watched all ten episodes.
And… bloody hell… is it one hell of a story. The first episode alone packs so much into it, thanks to decent pacing, that you wonder how big things will get with nine more episodes to go!
Starring Juno Temple (Ted Lasso), John Hamm (Mad Men), Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Single White Female), Lamorne Morris (Spider-Noir), amongst many others, this series follows Dorothy “Dot” Lyon (Temple), a seemingly cheerful homemaker who harbours a dark secret past which eventually catches up with her.
In this series, Minnesota “nice” is heavily weaponised, or at least used as a guard – in this case, hiding extreme trauma as Dot hides her past from her family (and the authorities). Plus, debt, both financial and moral, shapes the story, as almost every conflict centres on what people believed they were owed. The story also deals with domestic violence and the trauma that comes with it, as well as toxic masculinity and religious beliefs that mask it. It also includes a supernatural element: one of the characters may be considerably older than they look.
The story is exceptionally well told, and Juno Temple deserves recognition for her exceptional performance, one of the best I’ve seen in TV or film in a long time. Kudos also goes to John Hamm for playing the main villain (you just know he’s the bad guy as soon as his character is introduced). The series is dark, very violent, creepy, outrageous, very funny, and so much more. The way it’s structured and how the story unfolds makes it some of the best television I’ve seen in a long time.
It’s hard to know if we’ll get more Fargo, as Noah Hawley is currently focusing on the excellent Alien Earth (I really enjoyed the first season), but if season five is the last, well, it’s gone out in the best possible way.