Taylor Sheridan Meets ‘Breaking Bad’ in FX’s Near-Perfect 10-Part Detective Thriller Series
A Polygon opinion piece argues that Fargo, FX's anthology series inspired by the 1996 Coen brothers film, works best when it strikes a careful balance between echoing the movie's tone and forging new stories and characters. The writer contends that season two achieves this balance most successfully, blending the wintry Minnesota setting, dark humour and quirky characters reminiscent of the source film with an entirely original plot, making it, in their view, the strongest instalment across the show's five seasons to date.
Season two is set in Luverne, Minnesota, in 1979 and follows Peggy Blumquist (Kirsten Dunst), a hairdresser whose life unravels after she accidentally hits and kills the son of a crime boss with her car, triggering a violent turf war between rival gangs. The article praises Dunst's performance as a career-best turn and highlights her on-screen and real-life husband Jesse Plemons as her co-star, contrasting Peggy's amorality with his character's moral unease. The piece also assesses the other seasons, arguing season one leans too heavily on the original film, season four strays too far from it, and seasons three and five sit somewhere in between.
- Article ranks Fargo's TV seasons by how closely they echo the original film.
- Writer names season two, starring Kirsten Dunst, the series' best.
- Season two's 1979 Minnesota plot centres on a fatal hit-and-run and gang war.
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Fargo is a critically acclaimed anthology series on the American cable channel FX, loosely inspired by the 1996 Coen brothers film of the same name. Each season is a self-contained story with new characters and a new setting, though all share the film's blend of small-town Midwestern American life, sudden violence and dark comedy.
The second season, first broadcast in 2015, is set in Luverne, Minnesota, in 1979. It centres on Peggy Blumquist, a hairdresser played by Kirsten Dunst, whose ordinary life spirals out of control after a car accident draws her into a bloody conflict between rival criminal organisations. Jesse Plemons, Dunst's real-life husband, also stars in the season.
The story here is a piece of television criticism revisiting the show years after it first aired, weighing up how each of its five seasons balances staying faithful to the original film against telling something new.