There is, as yet, no official greenlight, but with a massive 18 Emmy nominations to now call their own, the creative team behind the series Fargo are already looking ahead to their next chapter. More specifically, the show’s creator and writer, Noah Hawley, has dropped some interesting hints to The Hollywood Reporter about what we might expect.
“I feel like I’m close to a new idea for another Fargo 10 hour idea that we’ll talk about in the coming weeks.
“What’s really interesting about this exercise of emulating a movie, as a storyteller, is having available to me a whole body of work. The Coen Brothers are so varied, from Raising Arizona to A Serious Man – there’s so much.
“What is the inspiration for this season? It’s always going to be rooted in true crime. There will always be a grisly murder, with good versus evil.”
The show – ‘inspired by’ the 1996 film of the same name rather than being a remake of it – was an unprecedented success for FX when it began to air in April. Set 19 years after the film’s events, the TV show occupies the same ‘universe,’ but shifts the setting from Brainerd to Bemidji in Minnesota. The characters in the show are technically different, but in many ways similar to those in the film – and herein lies the success of the whole endeavour. It manages to be entirely different, but woven very closely to the source material. Fans of the film can identify the characters and plots that most resemble those in the film, but they remain fresh and new regardless. In addition, the entire thing benefits greatly from the involvement of the Coen Brothers themselves, as executive producers.
So, beyond the question of which entries into the Coen back catalogue Noah Hawley will be mining this time around, the real quandary will be who to cast. Season 1 starred Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Bob Odenkirk, Keith Carradine, Adam Goldberg, Oliver Platt, Kate Walsh, Key and Peele and Stephen Root. How do you top that line-up? Something tells me Hawley and his team won’t struggle to fill roles in Fargo season 2 – whatever form it takes. The outstanding achievement of season 1 has seen to that.