Linda Holmes explains the premise of FX’s new Fargo series:
It seemed, candidly, like an absurd idea when FX announced that it was making a TV series based on Fargo, the Coen Brothers film from 1996. That was a completed story that didn’t lend itself to a lot of obvious “further adventures.” It didn’t seem like very much more activity could be … afoot. Furthermore, the film was full of performances surely no one would be dumb enough to try to do over, like Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson and William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard. The Coens were on board as executive producers; what could these people possibly have in mind?
As it turns out, what they had in mind was a completely new story borrowing the tone, some of the dynamics, and some of the atmosphere of the film, but not the characters and not the story itself.
Choitner notes how the show plays off the original:
What was initially striking about Episode 1 was the degree to which various characters were based on people from the original movie, and yet also distinct. It’s quite obvious that Martin Freeman’s passive, absurd insurance salesman is a close relative of William H. Macy’s doomed car salesman from the movie. And Allison Tolman’s as-yet-undeveloped policewoman, Molly, is certainly related to the protagonist of the film, played brilliantly by Frances McDormand. But both characters are also different in significant ways, which make their character developments more surprising (because of our expectations) than they would otherwise be.
Chris Orr puts the show in context:
Like True Detective and its own FX sibling American Horror Story, Fargo is a limited series—10 episodes from start to finish—with the possibility, depending on its success, of becoming an “anthology” show in which future seasons would feature new casts and storylines. The benefits of this kind of miniseries-with-benefits are growing increasingly evident: the ability to attract bigger stars or directors (Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick will be coming to Cinemax later this year); the avoidance of sticking-around-a-season-too-long syndrome; the requirement that a show knows where it’s headed before it begins. (Yeah, Lost, I’m looking at you.)
Poniewozik’s take:
Fargo feels not just like an adaptation of one Coen brothers movie but many: it has hints of No Country for Old Men, which pitted fallible humans against a seemingly unstoppable evil, and A Serious Man, which asked what it would be like if God were active in our world, an Old Testament God who laid tests and rendered judgment. (Not to mention, Always Sunny’s Glenn Howerton as an ineptly scheming personal trainer is a figure straight out of Burn After Reading.)
Alyssa Rosenberg sees the series as a response to the slew of anti-hero shows:
“Fargo” is a show about a lot of things, but prominent among them is what really might happen if we embarked on the dreams of bad behavior that have drawn such large audience and garnered such critical attention. People die badly and painfully in “Fargo,” and the people who kill them feel horrible afterwards. The show is incredibly, darkly hilarious, but the joke is on the people who indulge in fantasies of badassdom, not on the supposed rubes who play by the rules.
The Dish 