Fargo the TV miniseries

Yes, the same Fargo from the Coen brothers, except now as a 10-part miniseries.

Martin Freeman is playing the role William H. Macy played in the film.

Why? Fargo is pretty much perfect as is.

I read that as “Morgan Freeman” at first, which doesn’t work at all. I don’t think Morgan Freeman can do ineffectual and a tad stupid.

In any case, yeah, stretching the story out isn’t going to do it any favors.

The Coens don’t appear to have any involvement beyond an exec producer credit. I’d be interested to see them work in a serial format but I have no interest in others reinterpreting their work.

It’s hard to see anyone else making violence funny. Often gruesome violence (re: the wood chipper).

If you read the article, it’s not a retelling of Fargo, it’s a new story with similar themes in roughly the same region, and Freeman’s character has essentially the same role in the narrative but is not the same character. As such, I don’t have any real expectation that it will be as good as Fargo was, but it could still be well worth watching. It’ll also have Billy Bob Thornton.

First episode came out, and it’s good. Not exactly the Coen brothers, but in the ballpark, and Martin Freeman/Billy Bob Thornton are excellent. (Does Martin Freeman have good chemistry with everyone?)

It turns out that Fargo the TV series is based on Fargo the movie in exactly the same way that Fargo the movie was Based On A True Story.

Well played, sirs, well played.

Not entirely sold on the leads yet. At first I thought Freeman was too nebbishy and henpecked, but that was before I realized he isn’t actually playing William Macy’s character from the movie. We’ll see how he develops.

I normally love Billy Bob, but he seems a bit off his game here. It looks like they’re trying for Javier Bardem-creepy (complete with copious visual/situational quotes from No Country For Old Men) but he’s just coming off as flat right now.

I did like it, and laughed quite a bit at times. There’s humorous violence, but it’s counterbalanced by some very non-humorous violence. Billy Bob is a bit more refined than Bardem’s type of creepiness; Billy Bob psychologically analyzes people quickly and is more than willing to sew chaos for no other reason than to sew chaos.

Liked the chief but you just knew he was gonna get killed.

Filmed in Alberta I believe. Sheesh, they couldn’t even get Minnesota to be cold enough…

— Alan

It definitely had its moments but all of it feels just a little bit off. I’ll keep watching it but it’s not quite good enough to compensate for the distaste it leaves in your mouth.

Alan Sepinwall suggests that it gets better from here so that’s encouraging. There was a lot I did like in the first episode so, if it finds its legs I’ll likely enjoy it over all.

The first 20 minutes or so had me worried. Really just felt like a bad attempt at ripping off Fargo. After that I thought it started to get much better and I walked away having really enjoyed the episode.

Just watched it, and I’ve got to echo everybody else’s thoughts, this was truly excellent. It captured that Fargo feel of endless dreary setup punctuated by bursts of shocking violence. Looking forward to see how they extend that across an entire series.

I liked it. It was a bit darker than I expected due to it being on TV. Thought the casting was excellent and that Freeman and Thornton did great. You could see the Chief getting it from a mile away but I think that was the point. Thorntons character could be awesome. He just loves chaos and goes around lighting peoples fuses just to see what blows up. The show is off to a good start, hopefullly it keeps going good.

Animated gif with subtitles for the hammer scene, please. LOL.

Quite dark, really. But I really liked Thornton’s role: understated, but he’s basically The Devil, whispering in people’s ears.

I’ll give it another episode, but I don’t think it capture any of the quirky charm of the movie. A dark comedy is fine, I just though overall there was too much emphasis on the dark and not nearly enough on the comedy.
Billy Bob was definitely the star of the show and the only reason I’ll watch another episode.

No subtitles, but someone agrees with you.

So - was that the first TV “ker-plop”? I know that Hank had an epiphany while sitting on the toilet in Breaking Bad, but there was never that punctuation to the scene of an actual “ker-plop” (well, officially - fan additions don’t count).

So I had to catch up by actually watching the FARGO movie , I did that earlier this past week, and now I watched the 2 episodes of this miniseries. And its fantastic, Thorton is just perfect, as is Freeman, and Hanks (even if he hasn’t had much air time yet.)

Might be my favorite new show of the year.