I started watching this series because I like snowy locations and also love listening to the chirpy upper Midwest accent of the United States.
I was rather hoping to add this accent to my repertoire but I suspect I'll never completely master it. It's way too hard. I have, however, become completely hooked on the show.
If you like snow, ice, and people locked in the trunks of cars you'll love Fargo (Channel 4). There's a whole heap of snow, waist deep in many places, and almost everyone gets locked in a trunk at some point. If they ever had a car boot sale in Duluth they would first have to clear out all the dead bodies.
Fargo is based on the Coen Brothers' film of the same name, but the storyline is completely different from the original movie. It stars Martin Freeman as a geeky, cowardly wife-killer called Lester Nygaard. From office Romeos to questing hobbits, Freeman has always tended to play nice guys in the past, so even when he turns up as a hammer toting murderer it's quite difficult not to warm to him.
Lester's call to adventure comes when he's in a snowy supermarket car park and is thumped on the nose by an old school adversary. Our hero trudges through the snow to visit his local casualty department and like me turns out to have an extraordinary talent for standing or sitting next to nutters.
I have tremendous sympathy for this trait. In my own life there's a nutter in every bus queue and a nutter in every restaurant. Only yesterday I sat next to a spectacular nutter on the Piccadilly Line. The train was packed, the nutter could have gone and sat anywhere, and yet he came and sat next to me.
But Lester's nutter is no ordinary nutter. This nutter is a fully blown, card-carrying, axe-wielding psychopath by the name of Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton).
Don't be fooled by this character's comical haircut and folksy sense of humor. Malvo's a violent control freak and the only thing he loves more than killing people is getting away with it. Even when the police know exactly what Malvo's up to they still seem powerless to do anything about it.
Mind you, the Fargo police force do appear to be fairly stupid, particularly Gus Grimly (played by Tom Hanks' son Colin). Gus makes Forrest Gump look like Professor Brian Cox and his chubby colleague Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) is not much brighter. The only real brains in the outfit seem to be that of Bill Oswalt (Bob Odenkirk who portrayed infamous bent lawyer Saul in Breaking Bad.) Fargo is small town Americana at its best, and the world that's created in this show is hypnotic and highly addictive. Malvo's unquenchable malice and dark humour are immensely watchable and it's not long before you are so drawn into the surreal Fargo universe that even plagues of locusts and showers of blood become as routine as a day at the office with an insurance salesman.
Fargo is no doubt going to get much snowier, much weirder and much more nasty before the season finale, and I for one will be glued to every second.
I was rather hoping to add this accent to my repertoire but I suspect I'll never completely master it. It's way too hard. I have, however, become completely hooked on the show.
If you like snow, ice, and people locked in the trunks of cars you'll love Fargo (Channel 4). There's a whole heap of snow, waist deep in many places, and almost everyone gets locked in a trunk at some point. If they ever had a car boot sale in Duluth they would first have to clear out all the dead bodies.
Fargo is based on the Coen Brothers' film of the same name, but the storyline is completely different from the original movie. It stars Martin Freeman as a geeky, cowardly wife-killer called Lester Nygaard. From office Romeos to questing hobbits, Freeman has always tended to play nice guys in the past, so even when he turns up as a hammer toting murderer it's quite difficult not to warm to him.
Lester's call to adventure comes when he's in a snowy supermarket car park and is thumped on the nose by an old school adversary. Our hero trudges through the snow to visit his local casualty department and like me turns out to have an extraordinary talent for standing or sitting next to nutters.
I have tremendous sympathy for this trait. In my own life there's a nutter in every bus queue and a nutter in every restaurant. Only yesterday I sat next to a spectacular nutter on the Piccadilly Line. The train was packed, the nutter could have gone and sat anywhere, and yet he came and sat next to me.
But Lester's nutter is no ordinary nutter. This nutter is a fully blown, card-carrying, axe-wielding psychopath by the name of Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton).
Don't be fooled by this character's comical haircut and folksy sense of humor. Malvo's a violent control freak and the only thing he loves more than killing people is getting away with it. Even when the police know exactly what Malvo's up to they still seem powerless to do anything about it.
Mind you, the Fargo police force do appear to be fairly stupid, particularly Gus Grimly (played by Tom Hanks' son Colin). Gus makes Forrest Gump look like Professor Brian Cox and his chubby colleague Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) is not much brighter. The only real brains in the outfit seem to be that of Bill Oswalt (Bob Odenkirk who portrayed infamous bent lawyer Saul in Breaking Bad.) Fargo is small town Americana at its best, and the world that's created in this show is hypnotic and highly addictive. Malvo's unquenchable malice and dark humour are immensely watchable and it's not long before you are so drawn into the surreal Fargo universe that even plagues of locusts and showers of blood become as routine as a day at the office with an insurance salesman.
Fargo is no doubt going to get much snowier, much weirder and much more nasty before the season finale, and I for one will be glued to every second.
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