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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
155
Mixed:
19
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Sep 23, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Fargo occasionally strains under the weight of what it’s attempting to accomplish: a lively examination of the history of different groups of Western European immigrants who have gradually been granted whiteness, and the many Black Americans, whose ancestors were brought here by force (and greed), but are now, as Doctor Senator puts it, a “part of this land, like the wind and the dirt.”
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Apr 18, 2017
Season 3 Review:
There are some truly shocking moments early on, but it all just feels a bit too familiar. Luckily, the cast picks up the narrative slack; Winstead and Coon might both be playing thwarted women, but they’re basically fire and ice. McGregor manages to carve out distinct personalities in his dual performance.
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Oct 12, 2015
Season 2 Review:
It’s atypical in the television industry for a show born of a larger creative trend to surpass the trend’s flashpoint, but with the new season, Fargo puts itself head and shoulders above its anthology peers. Bigger isn’t necessarily better, but can it be, when done thoughtfully? You betcha.
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The Daily BeastNov 20, 2023
Oct 9, 2015
Season 2 Review:
As always, this is a scattered story with multiple moving parts.... Fargo revels in presenting ordinary folk with extraordinary problems, in stripping away their everyday guises and peering long and hard at their dark potential. That it can do this through adaptations of true stories makes it all the more jaw-dropping.
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Sep 14, 2020
Season 4 Review:
It's a period drama featuring two dozen (or more) main and guest characters. Yet even with those moments in which Fargo loses track of who was supposed to be the story's heart or which narrative threads have the most urgency, when the show works — when its vision is realized entirely — very little on TV can compete.
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Oct 7, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The Emmy-winning first season of Fargo, the limited series that was inspired by the Coen brothers film of the same name was a triumph on multiple levels as one of the most creative and evocative works on TV in 2014. The second season proves that was no fluke.... It's all here--writing, acting, directing, music--combining to make a very riveting and entertaining dark comedy spectacle.
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Apr 11, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The casting on Fargo is superb, but none more so than Thornton, who is absolutely magnetic as the calm killer with a penchant for wry observation.... The four episodes that FX sent are a testament to Hawley’s bold belief that he could tackle such an original piece of cinema and make it work on the small screen.
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Apr 14, 2014
Sep 24, 2020
Season 4 Review:
It’s a more ordinary show, a more mundanely plotted and “watchable” show (through the nine episodes available for review), with less of the strangeness and arch surrealism that didn’t always work but generally kept you engaged with the stories. Its oddities felt original in earlier seasons; here, they tend toward caricature. And cliché.
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Apr 18, 2017
Season 3 Review:
Fargo is becoming an expertly made meta-concoction, a remix of a remix. ... The effect of the casting [of Ewan McGregor as the two brothers] isn’t to show the brothers’ similarity, but how life and circumstance have shaped them so differently. It’s remarkable, and no mere stunt.
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The TelegraphNov 22, 2023
Oct 12, 2015
Season 2 Review:
Writer and executive producer Noah Hawley upped the game with a sharp, well-developed story involving multiple moving parts. It’s smart, thought out and full of watchable characters with convincing enough motives to create the perfect amount of viewer sympathy. The end result isn’t just a “Fargo” 2.0 (or 3.0 depending on your love of film), but an evolved story that takes television to a whole new level.
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Apr 15, 2014
Season 1 Review:
At times, however, Hawley goes a little too heavy on the quirk, and Thornton, who last regularly appeared on TV in the John Ritter political comedy “Hearts Afire” in the early 1990s, overly indulges in that smirk. Bits between mob enforcers Mr. Numbers (Adam Goldberg) and Mr. Wrench (Russell Harvard) also wear out their welcome. The overall quality of TV's Fargo is high.
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Sep 28, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Fargo still creates an absorbing, cinematic viewing experience, with painterly framing, pointedly deployed split-screen and arcane yet evocative needle drops. ... With such a crowded plot, it’s no wonder the show can’t maintain a consistent tone. ... Like this nation, the new season is a beautiful and ugly, inspiring and infuriating, a tragic and sometimes darkly hilarious mess. As frustrating as it often was to watch, I couldn’t look away.
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Sep 14, 2020
Season 4 Review:
At this point, even after three years between seasons, the Fargo model has gotten a little stale. Season 4 is feeling a bit like diminishing returns. Which is not to say the show is at all bad; it's still fun to watch and exceptionally well-made. It just doesn't feel as vital as it once did.
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TV Guide MagazineDec 1, 2023
Season 5 Review:
Series creator continues to flavor crime drama with humor and taste for the bizarre, assembling another remarkable cast for a funky fable of survival in the chilly Midwest. .... Marvelous Juno Temple is ferociously endearing as Dot. [27 Nov - 17 Dec 2023, p.6]
TV Guide MagazineSep 28, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Thrillingly unpredictable fourth installment of Fargo. ... A dark tide of inventive quirkiness. [28 Sep - 11 Oct 2020, p.8]
TV Guide MagazineApr 27, 2017
Season 3 Review:
One man's bland is another's bliss, don't ya know. That's certainly the case with the third season of Noah Hawley's Fargo franchise, with its delicious recipe of quirky humanism and chilling, shocking violence unaltered by a year's hiatus. [1-14 May 2017, p.19]
TV Guide MagazineOct 8, 2015
Season 2 Review:
Fargo casts a mesmerizing spell of suspenseful whimsy in its second year. [12-25 Oct 2015, p.16]
Uncle BarkyApr 18, 2017
Season 3 Review:
The main characters also aren’t clicking on all cylinders yet, save for the dastardly Varga and his bitingly delicious way of putting things. ... This latest Fargo likely will be quite a trip, with its principal creative force, Noah Hawley, not to be discounted in terms of coming through in the clutch.
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Uncle BarkyOct 8, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The first four episodes sent for review give every indication that this all-new story with mostly new characters will reach if not surpass FX’s first time around with Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Bob Odenkirk, Keith Carradine, etc.
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Nov 22, 2023
Season 5 Review:
Later surprise-laden and richly complex scenes handily salvage Fargo’s fifth season after a ham-fisted start. That, and consistently remarkable performances at even the most shoddily written early moments, along with breathtaking action and bleak humor, show Hawley is still a TV visionary well suited to build on the Coen Brothers’ Fargo 1996 film legacy–even if he takes commendable big swings that occasionally miss.
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Oct 1, 2020
Season 4 Review:
By throwing caution to the frostbiting wind, rather than trudging over former glories, Hawley and co. give TV’s great snow swept saga quirkier characters that cover greater thematic ground. Is it a departure? And is that what makes it great? On both counts: oh yeaaah, you betcha.
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Apr 28, 2017
Season 3 Review:
From its dynamic female characters, to its willingness to turn dashing leading men like McGregor into far more fascinating warts and all character actors, to its exquisite (and frequently hilarious) montages about everyday Americana, Fargo's third season is thus far as strong as any of the sterling preceding tales in this snowed in noir universe.
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UPROXXApr 13, 2017
Season 3 Review:
There’s a palpable joy throughout, not only in the performances by actors like Thewlis and Winstead who play the more outgoing roles, but in the way that Hawley and his collaborators assemble the pieces. ... If the new season turns out to be a slightly diminished version of what came before, that’s still a pretty good place to be.
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Apr 18, 2017
Season 3 Review:
This is a series chock full of great characters, male and female, that exudes wit, intelligence and a palpable desire to entertain. It’s possible, of course, that this latest Fargo will sag in the middle or fall apart at the end. But neither of the other two seasons did, so here's betting this one won’t either.
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Sep 24, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Fargo is full of riches—decadent set pieces and fascinating visual choices—but they ornament a sparse narrative. ... Fargo isn’t bad. It tries to do so many things, and it kind of succeeds at a lot of them. But it serves too many masters to transcend the sum of its parts.
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Nov 21, 2023
Season 5 Review:
The first few episodes are a riveting cat-and-mouse game with the potential for a role reversal heavily foreshadowed. .... But the momentum starts to flag as Hawley works to sustain drum-tight tension for several hours. .... The more “Fargo” plays up Roy and Dot as archetypes of a controlling man and his victim, the less interesting they are.
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Sep 18, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Outsize characterizations are not new for “Fargo,” but a balance has been lost here, with many characters standing in for the grandest sorts of evil and too few giving us what the series at its best possesses — soulfulness. Rock gets those notes, though, and plays them well. ... Rock’s real human wistfulness, a break in the season’s showy nuttery, feels like a flicker of the show that might have been, and could be still.
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Apr 13, 2017
Season 3 Review:
In the early going, the third season of Fargo, which is set in 2010, offers a sprinkling of skillful characterization, dialogue, and production design without providing enough psychologically compelling components to balance out the largely dry and even perfunctory aspects of the drama. The elements viewers have come to expect are accounted for, as if by checklist.
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Oct 7, 2015
Season 2 Review:
FX’s frost-covered drama appears to have equaled its splendid predecessor, capturing the same off-kilter tone while actually enhancing the comedy quotient. If the first series deftly approximated the spirit of its movie namesake, this one works in a cheeky Quentin Tarantino vibe, with results as refreshing and bracing as the region’s abundant snow.
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Apr 10, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Directed by Adam Bernstein, the 90-minute premiere is particularly taut and effective, with three subsequent episodes slightly less so; nevertheless, there’s enough going on (indeed, almost too much) and such a weird string of dominos that it’s hard not to imagine those sampling the opener won’t want to see things through to the finish.
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Oct 12, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The only complaint one could muster about Fargo this time is that it spreads itself on too thickly in the first two episodes. In moments that count, the show can seem more interested in style than substance. Season 2 also introduces so many characters (played by equally strong actors, including Ted Danson as Trooper Solverson’s father-in-law, Hank; Cristin Milioti as Solverson’s wife, Betsy; and Nick Offerman as Karl, Luverne’s most conspiracy-minded lawyer--to name a few) and so many fascinating threads at once that it threatens to collapse under its own weight. The intricacies do begin to cohere by Episode 4.
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Apr 19, 2017
Season 3 Review:
As always, however, the pleasures of Fargo derive from the variety of the characters and the clever wordplay they indulge in. ... Coon and Hawley quickly establish the distinctiveness of Gloria’s character: she’s not as polite as Allison Tolman’s Deputy Molly Solverson in season one, nor as tight-lipped serene as Patrick Wilson’s Trooper Lou Solverson in season two.
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Oct 12, 2015
Season 2 Review:
This Fargo has a different idea of evil, based on something just as insidious as Malvo: The grinding amorality of capitalism, which demands more profit no matter what the human cost. In the new Fargo, this is placed in a context that is frequently witty, and balanced with scenes of great family love. The large cast is superb.
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