Fargo’s first season anticipated the current deluge of film-to-TV reboots, and was reassuringly great to boot: an adaptation that managed to be respectful of its source material – the Coen brothers’ revered 1995 film of the same name – while telling an entirely new, and entirely gripping, story of its own.
It returns for a second season this autumn with another change of direction. This time around, the action hops back in time to 1979, and focuses on the story of Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson), a police officer assigned the tricky dual tasks of foiling a Minnesota crime syndicate and protecting a certain Republican presidential candidate named Ronald Reagan.
This sudden storyline shift necessitated an entirely new cast, and if anything, Fargo’s creators seemed to have managed to wrangle an even better cast than season one. We’ve already had an extended glimpse of Kirsten Dunst as beautician Peggy Blomquist, but here, in the show’s first full trailer, we get to see more of the season’s major players: Parks and Recreation’s Nick Offerman as a town lawyer; Jean Smart as mob boss Floyd Gerhardt; Kieran Culkin as her youngest son Rye; Jesse Plemons – he of that devastating Breaking Bad train heist – as Peggy’s wife Ed; and the silvery Ted Danson as Hank Larsson, the sheriff of Rock County, Minnesota.
Of course, this being Fargo, there are plenty of nasty moments here as well: a trail of blood in a chintzy diner, a pair of severed ears and a man seemingly about to be buried alive – not to mention a hefty spoonful of the “Aw, shucks” “Minnesota nice” we’re by now used to. It’s a beautiful day …
