Overview
A man struts into a diner and asks "who've I gotta kill to get a coffee?". When a woman hears the doorbell ring, she instantly grabs her gun, baseball bat and taser. The series that'll include both? Fargo, the anthology TV show inspired by the big-screen Coen brothers masterpiece, which is returning for its fifth season in November.
2023 marks almost a decade since writer, director and producer Noah Hawley leapt from Bones, The Unusuals and My Generation to diving back into crime in often-frosty American places — and always with a strong streak of black comedy pumping through its veins. The first two seasons arrived back to back in 2014 and 2015, with season three then following in 2017 and season four in 2020. Now, after another three-year gap, the show returns with a whole new story and cast, but still set in the same world as the Fargo movie.
Oh you betcha there's accents, crime capers, dedicated cops, and people doing dark deeds for selfish reasons and then getting karmic comeuppance. When it arrives in Australia via SBS On Demand on Wednesday, November 22, Fargo's fifth season will do so with a stacked lineup of talent, too: Juno Temple (Ted Lasso), Jon Hamm (Good Omens), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Hunters) and Joe Keery (Stranger Things) all included, plus David Rysdahl (Oppenheimer), Lamorne Morris (Woke), Richa Moorjani (Never Have I Ever), Sam Spruell (The Gold) and Dave Foley (The Kids in the Hall) as well.
Like season one, two and the movie, this season spends its time in Minnesota and North Dakota. The year: 2019. Dorothy 'Dot' Lyon (Temple) is the otherwise-ordinary person falling afoul of the law — so, when she grabs those weapons in one of the show's sneak peeks, she's clearly not an average Midwestern housewife — while Roy Tillman (Hamm) is the North Dakota Sheriff (and preacher) on her trail.
In a case of spectacular casting, Keery will put his famous hair to good use as Tillman's son Gator, in a franchise that also loves unpacking the ties of blood that bind and cause chaos. Spruell plays a drifter who is enlisted to help on the search for Dot, while Rysdahl is her husband Wayne. Leigh hops on board as his mother, aka the 'Queen of Debt' thanks to being a debt collection company CEO, and Foley plays her in-house counsel. Among the cops, there's Moorjani as a deputy from Minnesota and Morris as a North Dakota counterpart.
Everyone on-screen joins a saga that's seen Billy Bob Thornton (The Gray Man), Allison Tolman (Gaslit), Martin Freeman (Breeders), Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog), Patrick Wilson (Insidious: The Red Door), Jesse Plemons (Love and Death), Jean Smart (Hacks), Ewan McGregor (Raymond & Ray), Carrie Coon (Boston Strangler), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ahsoka), Chris Rock (Amsterdam), Jessie Buckley (Women Talking) and Jason Schwartzman (Asteroid City) all feature in past seasons.
Off-screen, Hawley is back as showrunner, writer and director, guiding a series that started with the hard task of living up to the masterpiece of a movie and hasn't struggled so far.
Check out the teaser trailers for Fargo season five below:
Fargo season five will start streaming via SBS On Demand on Wednesday, November 22.
Images: Michelle Faye/FX.