Fargo Review

Hawley's gamble was that the Coen brothers' register could be extended rather than imitated, and the first two seasons prove him right. The 2015 run, set in 1979, is the peak, a Minnesota crime saga with a rolling ensemble, a real argument about the Vietnam era and a split screen technique that never collapses into gimmick. Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons play two people whose ordinary stupidity escalates into mass death, and Bokeem Woodbine gets the best dialogue in the entire series.

Season one lives or dies on Billy Bob Thornton, who plays Lorne Malvo as a man delighted by how easy people are, and Allison Tolman deserved a far bigger career out of it. Dana Gonzales shoots snow better than anyone working, using the whiteout as negative space rather than atmosphere. The later seasons wobble. The third has a strong Ewan McGregor double performance attached to a plot that goes slack, and the fourth is badly overpopulated. Uneven across its run and unmatched at its best, which is the anthology bargain.