Fargo

The first episode promised a VERY funny, uncompromising and atmospheric series full of black humour. Unfortunately, in the episodes that followed Fargo lost much of that and, in particular, it delivered a lot less humour. The main storyline was a lot of fun (Martin Freeman is excellent as Lester), but some of the subplots, on the other hand, weren’t interesting at all. Things improved a little in the last two episodes, but I think it was at the expense of several weird and unjustified decisions by some of the characters. Good overall (very good, actually), but the pilot episode promised a lot more. (20.06.2014)

After quite some time I decided to start watching some TV show again. Fargo had very strong reviews and it was attractive in and of itself. I know the original movie and so I was curious to see the premise stretched out into 10 whole hours. The authors managed that quite well, even though I couldn’t shake the feeling that the middle of the show was boring rather than engaging. I feel like the peak of the show were the first and the last two episodes. The middle is just a filling where you’re building relationships with the individual characters and Martin Freeman goes through a brutal character development, which is the only upside of the middle episodes. However, if it weren’t for Billy Bob Thornton, there would barely be a third of this show, maybe even fourth. He’s just absolutely amazing and his character really had his place here. Maybe the middle was so lacking in quality because he wasn’t in it a lot. The ending made up for everything and the amazing atmosphere of the snowy American countryside put a cherry on top of it all. The movie Fargo is full of elaborate little details and the show sticks by that. But I still can’t shake off the feeling that it “just” stretched the original movie out into individual episodes. But… what else could we expect? (09.03.2015)

Wenn Ihnen der Film gefallen hat, wird Ihnen auch die Serienadaption gefallen. Kalte Tage in Minnesota haben ihren Reiz. Aber bisher scheint jede Serie für sich zu stehen, und jede Geschichte hat ihre Vor- und Nachteile. Absolut großartig ist die zweite Staffel mit Kirsten Dunst und Jesse Plemons. Der erste und der dritte Teil sind es wert, dass man sich die Zeit nimmt, nur beim vierten weiß ich nicht, ob ich es bis zum Ende aushalte. (14.10.2015)