Fargo - Season 1 (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Writer: Noah Hawley + others
	Actors: Billy Bob Thornton (Armageddon, Bandits), Martin Freeman (The Hobbit 1-3, Sherlock TV-series), Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks (King Kong)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Polar, Black Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: December 2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Strange murders follow one another in the northern town of Bemidji. Lester Nygaard (Freeman) meets the strange character Lorne Malvo (Thornton), while police officer Molly Solverson (Tolman) tries to solve the cases.
Review: A TV-series inspired by the atypical movie from the Coen brothers, and produced by the VOD provider Netflix. I heard some good about it, so I pre-ordered it in Blu-ray some months ago, not knowing that I would be a Netflix customer by now and could get the series for free. I kept the Blu-ray anyway for the better image and sound quality. At first it looks like the series tries too hard to copy the successful elements of the movie: rural town in the frozen North, simple folk not so good looking and wearing unfashionable clothes, local accents and vocabulary, a pregnant woman, remarkable bandits (one if deaf), violent murders intruding in an otherwise peaceful town, ... Fortunately after the introductory first two episodes that feeling disappeared, probably helped by the remarkable performance by Billy Bob Thornton as a psychopath, and the lovable Marting Freeman (although his play reminds me too much of Bilbo in The Hobbit, I am curious to see how he plays in Sherlock). The series also keeps entertaining because of the unpredictable events in it (like in many modern series): bad things happen not only to the good guys but also to the bad guys! The summun is reached at the beginning of the fourth episode "Eating the Blame", when we understand the connection with Fargo the movie. Episode 7 "Who shaves the barber?" is not bad either when it shows Malvo it full swing. A second season is announced. If the episodes are shown in Germany on Netflix at the same time as they are released in the US, I will undoubtedly catch them.
Rating: 7 /10