This incessant I.P.-mining has resulted in some of the most unoriginal and unnecessary TV shows in recent years: Secret Invasion, The Book of Boba Fett, half the Walking Dead spinoffs. But it’s also given us some hidden gems. Seth MacFarlane’s Ted prequel series feels like vintage Family Guy; Peacemaker elevated a C-list supervillain to iconic hero status; and Fargo successfully translated the Coen brothers’ sensibility to the small screen.
FX's Fargo Series Successfully Adapted The Coen Brothers For Television
When it was first announced that FX would be adapting the Coens’ Oscar-winning masterpiece Fargo into a TV series, it seemed like a fool’s errand. Not only is Fargo a truly perfect movie that no remake could possibly hope to live up to; it’s also got a very specific, very unique point-of-view that would be difficult to replicate without it feeling slightly off. Many filmmakers have tried to emulate the Coen brothers, and almost all of them have failed (with Barry’s Bill Hader being a notable exception).
But FX picked the right showrunner to bring this reboot to life. Noah Hawley, who would later bring Alien and the X-Men to the small screen, perfectly replicated the Coens’ signature pitch-black humor. He told a brand-new story that didn’t hit all the same beats as Fargo, but did have the unmistakably quirky, offbeat feel of Fargo. The TV show recaptures what made the movie so compelling: it views this grisly, pulpy criminal underworld through the eyes of ordinary people leading mundane suburban lives.
That first season was universally praised by critics and proved to be a hit with audiences, so FX has since renewed the show for four more seasons, each with their own cast, setting, and storyline, but all with that same Coen-style darkly comic bite.
Even Fargo's Worst Seasons Are Still Pretty Good
As with any anthology show, Fargo has been a bit hit-and-miss over the years, but even the worst seasons have still been pretty good. American Horror Story has had entire seasons that were a complete disaster from start to finish, and some seasons of Black Mirror have come and gone without dropping a single memorable installment. Fargo is much more consistent than the average anthology show; it doesn’t have a slip-up like True Detective season 2.
Fargo’s second season lived up to its first, and maybe even surpassed it with more engrossing emotional storytelling and even weirder twists and turns (including the brief appearance of a flying saucer). The problems started in season 3 and continued into season 4, but both of those seasons still had plenty of strengths and highlights, like Ewan McGregor’s dual performance as twins.
Season 5 was a return to form for Fargo. It used the basic setup of the original movie as a springboard into a totally different story. It imagines a version of Fargo where Jerry Lundegaard’s wife is a gun-toting badass with a mysterious past and a few old scores to settle.
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