Fargo, like True Detective, is forging forward from an acclaimed first season with a new series. Anthology television, to use the buzz phrase, affords the opportunity to wipe the narrative slate clean and start afresh. In the case of Fargo’s ten-part season 2, as producer Warren Littlefield revealed to The Hollywood Reporter, this will involve a dynastic clash of Midwestern crime syndicates in 1979.
"The second season is really is about the corporatisation of America. It's the difference between a mom and pop family business and a Walmart," Littlefield revealed. "It's the Kansas City Mob basically looking to do a hostile takeover of the Gerhard crime family. In the middle, we have a couple, Ed and Peggy Blomquist, and they get caught in the middle of a war between these two crime factions.”
The Blomquists, played by Kirsten Dunst and Breaking Bad’s Jesse Plemons, are a Sioux Falls, South Dakota couple slightly at odds anyway. She’s a woman with big-city dreams and a yearning to change her life, yet while her butcher’s assistant husband wants to support her new-found desire for self-discovery, he isn’t sure how to show it. The arrival of two warring crime dynasties probably won’t help with any of that, especially with Jean Smart’s crime family matriarch, Floyd Gerhardt, likely to leave a violent stamp on their community.
Expect more dark, and darkly-comic, drama. Patrick Wilson will star as Lou Solverson, a clean-cut Minnesota state patrolman, four years back from Vietnam, where he served in the Navy. A humble and competent man, Lou is a devoted husband to his wife Betsy, and father to four-year-old Molly. Ted Danson plays Hank Larsson, the sheriff of Rock County, Minnesota. An unflappable World War II vet who embodies a certain cowboy poetry, Hank is Lou’s father-in-law.
Nick Offerman is Karl Weathers, the town lawyer of Luverne, Minnesota. A Korean War vet, Karl is a flowery drunk blessed with the gift of gab and the eloquence of a true con artist. Brad Garrett, Kieran Culkin, Jeffrey Donovan and Bokeem Woodbine are also all aboard.
Set in the post-Vietnam era, the season is also backdropped by Ronald Reagan’s (Bruce Campbell) sharp rise to political pre-eminence. "America is seeking a healing time,” contextualises Littlefield.
Noah Hawley, who crafted the first season, is back for this second spinoff of the Coen brothers' world, with a late 2015 airdate pencilled in.