A Prairie Home Perfection: The Miraculous Qualities of FX’s Fargo
This should not have worked. FX’s Fargo — a limited-run series “original adaptation” of the Coen Brothers’ seminal 1996 film, which had its season finale last night — should not have been good. Carrying over many character types, plot tropes, and thematic ideas from the movie, it should have been a lazy cash-in or a failed experiment, ala the TV adaptations of Crash and Traffic after their Oscar-winning successes. But that was not the case. Just the opposite. In stunning fashion, Fargo was one of the best things I’ve seen on TV this year.
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