Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Ted Danson, Jean Smart, Jeffrey Donovan, Rachel Keller, Nick Offerman, Bokeem Woodbine, Zahn McClarnon, Kieran Culkin, Brad Garrett, Angus Sampson, Kier O’ Donnell, Bruce Campbell, Michael Hogan, Adam Arkin, Elizabeth Marvel, Allan Dobrescu, Raven Stewart, Brad Mann, Todd Mann, Emily Haine, Dan Beirne, Martin Freeman, Allison Tolman, Joey King, Colin Hanks, Keith Carradine.

The American Mid-West, not a place for the faint hearted or the easily rattled, a place where gun control is not even an option let alone discussed and in which the understanding of how the system might work when everyone is a crook is enough to leave the body count stacked ever higher. Everyone wants control, everyone fights just for that extra one per cent, to be recognised; the only trouble is recognition might lead to the office with a view, being told to get a haircut and the whole business in a town called Fargo a distant dream in which historians bicker over.

Living up to a series which has already become legendary is difficult work and for some, taking a step backwards in time to when President Carter told his fellow Americans that they were living in a time of crisis of confidence and looking at the turf wars that led to conglomerations and life not being run by politics but by corporations, could have been a very risky venture. However the nature of the American dream is built on strong foundations and sometimes even more sturdy corrupt ones and it takes a decent man to make a stand. With bullets flying all around him and with one simple road accident leading to a chain of events that could not be foreseen, State Trooper Lou Solverson, played by Patrick Wilson, does the right thing and keeps the series on track.

With any huge ensemble cast in a lengthy serial there will always be moments that each actor brings to the screen which is memorable, defining and impressive, their take on the scripted words somehow being pulled from the air as if being driven by the divine and in the second series of Fargo that truth held firm.

Although the follow up to highly rated initial series with Martin Freeman and Billy Bob Thornton didn’t quite have the same impetus, the same sense of urgency between two main antagonists, in Kirsten Dunst’s portrayal of Peggy Blumquist, the initial spark that creates the whole cataclysm that descends upon all who are touched it, Zahn McClarmon as the Native American who slowly draws into his own vengeful madness and Bokeem Woodvine as Mike Milligan, these three characters played with the rules of the viewer’s relationships with the abused and the abuser.

Not quite up to the levels of interest that series one of Fargo provided but still an entertaining series in which to while away time.

Ian D. Hall