Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Chris Rock, Jessie Buckley, Jason Schwartzman, Ben Whishaw, Jack Huston, Salvatore Esposito, E’myri Crutchfield, Andrew Bird, Jeremie Harris, Matthew Elam, Corey Hendrix, James Vincent Acquaroli, Gaetano Bruno, Stephen Spencer, Karen Aldridge, Glynn Turman, Timothy Olyphant, Kelsey Asbille, Rodney L. Jones, Rodney L. Jones, Nadia Simms, Tommaso Ragno, Torrey Hanson, Will Clinger, Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel, Sean Firtunato, Evan Mulrooney, Bokeem Woodbine, Brad Mann.
When we think of war, we imagine uniforms, we assume a command structure that is backed by national governance, and we perhaps reflect upon the culpability and the accountability of those we have sent our children to fight against; hoping that in some way the war is just, that the axis of evil that has goosestepped across another land and murdered civilians, destroyed the belief in hope, is actually what our government says it is, a malevolent form under the watchful eye of a madman to take apart.
The fourth series of Fargo is arguably more stand-alone than any of its predecessors, with only a last-minute link to the series as a whole, but that does not detract from how detailed, how observational it is, and in a time when we are rightly questioning the long-standing narrative of how certain gangs and organisations managed to take over much of the United States of America’s political, corporate and commercial infrastructure and interests.
Against the backdrop of racial tension and the march to dominance between ethnic races that has gone back decades, this series sees the exceptional Chris Rock, Jessie Buckley, Ben Whishaw, Jack Huston, E’m yri Crutchfield, Timothy Olyphant and Salvatore Esposito join the ranks of notable actors to have placed themselves inside the cult viewing television programme, and as the 11 episodes progress, as the war between the two families heats up and becomes a symbol of the aggression and bedrock of American business in recent years, so to do the innocents caught in the crossfire begin to question their worth to either side.
A war is fought between two armies quite convinced they are right, but in the world of Noah Hawley there is always the reason they are they are both, irreconcilably, criminally, wrong. Fargo does justice to the belief that there is no bad deed that goes unpunished, and no act that does not carry consequence, and with Chris Rock giving arguably his finest performance outside of comedy in his career, the exceptional Jessie Buckley as the deceitful, malevolent nurse Oraetta Mayflower, and E’myri Crutchfield as the glue that holds the entire narrative together in the role of Ethelrida Pearl Smutny, the fourth series of Fargo stands tall alongside its older television siblings.
There are no winners in the war against organised crime, remove one figure head, there is always another to take their place, and in Fargo, they all come out of the woodwork to seek the crown of the king.
Ian D. Hall