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Positive:
155
Mixed:
19
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
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]
Nov 22, 2023
Season 5 Review:
It’s much easier to emulate the arch performance style of the Coens’ movies than it is to convey a sense of the character beneath the quirks, and Temple never gives a sense of who Dot is at her core, even when it turns out later in the season that there are many more shoes left to drop. Leigh too seems overdirected, all nasal consonants and power-suit scowls. Hamm strikes a more effective balance. .... Hawley is disinclined or perhaps incapable of replicating their [the Coens'] self-effacing charm.
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The TelegraphNov 22, 2023
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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Nov 21, 2023
Season 5 Review:
Dorothy’s story, about a woman fearful of her past as well as what might be coming for her in the immediate future, is unmistakably a Fargo story. But it artfully captures something new within that story: the palpable tension in a contemporary America where men with guns, badges, and cowboy hats think they make the rules, leaving smart, savvy women with no choice but to prove them wrong.
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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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Nov 21, 2023
Season 5 Review:
Temple, best known here for “Ted Lasso,” is terrific. .... Three-fifths of the way in, the story feels comparatively conventional, notwithstanding that medieval flashback. But with four hours left to go — two whole “Fargo” movies — there are certainly surprises ahead, twists around corners hidden behind corners. Things will probably get crazy, and I’m eager to see it.
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Nov 21, 2023
Season 5 Review:
Despite this laundry list of great characters, what differentiates this season from the last is that the writers are telling a more intimate story. It’s ridiculous in several facets, but the absurdity has a way of contributing to, not detracting from, that intimacy. The characters become more riveting with each twist.
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Nov 21, 2023
Season 5 Review:
To the extent the latest version delivers a modest kick from its trademark mix of deadpan humor and explosive violence, is it possible to enjoy this season (six of the 10 were made available) strictly on its terms? You betcha. Thus far, though, this feels like a case of an established formula gradually yielding diminishing returns.
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The Daily BeastNov 20, 2023
Nov 15, 2023
Season 5 Review:
Promises to be an entertaining, stylishly filmed one. It’s not going to be peak “Fargo,” at least based on the four (of 10) episodes made available for review, but it features a few dynamic performances, a nicely focused story line, some compelling action, and a turn by Jennifer Jason Leigh that is so excessive you’ll wonder if her acting tutor is Nicolas Cage.
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ColliderNov 9, 2023
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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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]
Sep 28, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Previous seasons of "Fargo" achieve a balance between quotable dialogue and surprising action. That former features much more heavily than the latter in this season that slow-walks the narrative toward inevitable death and violence. If you have an ear for logorrhea and a hankering for quirk, these new "Fargo" episodes should deliver satisfaction. If that previous sentence made you roll your eyes or curse its writer, save your televisual peregrinating for another title. (To put it more simply, you can let this one pass.)
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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 25, 2020
Season 4 Review:
I had no trouble watching nine hours of the new series at a sitting, except for the sitting. ... Because criminals dominate the action, the story seems not so much morally complex as unfocused, and because there are so many storylines competing for air, including one involving Jessie Buckley as a nurse with bad habits (and a Minnesota accent to honor the franchise), the show robs some promising characters of screen time.
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Sep 24, 2020
Season 4 Review:
This is a highly professional endeavor, and there’s nothing (too) embarrassing happening here. The show’s self-seriousness leans toward the dull more than the ridiculous, although some ridiculousness would be more fun. It doesn’t help that Rock, who has described this as the best part he’s “ever, ever, ever” had, is in such single-mindedly dramatic mode that he does not bring any looseness or lightness to his role
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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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Sep 24, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Season four of Fargo isn’t interested in subtext unless it can be turned into text, underlined and boldfaced, with directional arrows. ... Anachronisms sink otherwise serviceable exchanges (the Twitter-certified warning “slow your roll” shows up twice), and lit’ry word-clots fail to translate from page to screen.
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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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Sep 24, 2020
Season 4 Review:
There are so very many good and great things to point to — characters whose evil is a thing of warped beauty, plots that balance thrillingly on contingency and bad timing, dialogue whose comedy is cloaked in murderous intention and gluttony, resonant cinematography that speaks of a grimly Disunited States — I don’t know which one to start with. Series creator Noah Hawley has come up with yet another ambitious, dazzling, and entertaining season of his Coen brothers-based anthology series.
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Sep 24, 2020
Season 4 Review:
“Fargo” feels utterly of its time and place. The dialogue is stylized and clever. ... Every episode contains stunning, elaborately choreographed scenes worthy of a major feature film. This is one of the best-looking series of the year, featuring some of the strongest performances of the year from more than a dozen of our finest actors.
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RogerEbert.comSep 23, 2020
Season 4 Review:
This latest “Fargo” installment suffers from too much muchness. There are isolated scenes of excellent melodrama, some thoughtfully pointed questions about the decay of the American dream, and a few standout performances. ... But with more characters than backstory, some particularly predictable turns, and a certain simplistic approach to its questions about race, this fourth season of “Fargo” sometimes feels like a tornado: all bluster and destruction, but with hollow emptiness at its core.
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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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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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Sep 14, 2020
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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Sep 14, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Earlier iterations of Fargo drew a lot of their power from a wide ensemble of curious people. Here, every introductory quirk is immediately annoying. ... It doesn’t help that, as the two characters with most prominence on their respective sides, Schwartzman and Rock are giving two flavors of bad performance.
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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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IndieWireSep 14, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Season 4 may not go down as the best year of “Fargo.” The structure lurches a bit, episode to episode, and the cast can’t collectively hit the highs of prior seasons’ players. (In part because they’re not asked to, given the dour tone.) But Hawley’s choice to evolve beyond his established structure is as necessary as it is invigorating.
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ColliderSep 14, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Hawley is a creator who loves images, ideas, and words, and not a single episode watched for review (FX provided the first nine) lacks for an unforgettable camera shot, a haunting character choice, or a line of dialogue so weird and wonderful it could only be Fargo. And in a year when pretty much everything feels coated with a layer of tarnish, perhaps it’s right that Year 4 is a season where heroes feel very hard to find.
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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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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]
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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Apr 19, 2017
Season 3 Review:
Even if some of the characters seem familiar or we recognize some of the narrative beats before they’re hit, we know from the very moment it begins that Fargo once again has a great, big story to tell us, and that means it’s time to settle in for the ride, wherever that old “Ace Hole” Corvette may take us.
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Apr 19, 2017
Season 3 Review:
Giving McGregor two roles seems at first like an oddball casting choice for a show that doesn’t need any more weirdness. Two episodes aren’t enough to say whether it is justified as more than Emmy bait for McGregor. Of the two roles, he seems more convincing as Ray. Thewlis oozes menace and charm as a mobster who has seen the world. ... Pack light. Fargo moves fast.
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Apr 18, 2017
Season 3 Review:
The show’s reputation continues to attract a variety of actors you wouldn’t necessarily put in a room together. Fortunately, McGregor underplays the dual role, avoiding caricature and subtly altering his Minnesota accent to suggest Ray and Emmit have had two completely different lives.
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Apr 18, 2017
Season 3 Review:
In some ways, this season of Fargo checks all of the boxes of its precedent seasons: the down-on-his-luck schlub with a surprise knack for crime; the sly yet intoxicating evil force; the righteous, morally sound cop; and the absurd, easily avoidable crime that sets everything into motion. What sets the season apart is its comparatively small cast of players.
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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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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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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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Apr 18, 2017
Season 3 Review:
Once we’re aware that’s coming, we can’t help but to expect it to happen. That puts the onus on Hawley and his writers to cook up an act so unexpected that it jolts us nevertheless. Whether initial crime of Season 3 fulfills that promise is debatable. The auxiliary circumstances and characters surrounding it, however, don’t initially hold enough tension to makes us salivate with anxiety for where this story will go next.
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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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Apr 18, 2017
Season 3 Review:
I just may need to put the show at the top of this year’s list, too. It’s as confidently filmed as season 2, with witty musical choices and a falling-air-conditioner-cam, and the plotting promises all kinds of the cosmic surprises that have become a “Fargo” trademark. And then the script is a model of tonal elasticity and a gift bag of twisted and comic pieces of wisdom.
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Apr 18, 2017
Season 3 Review:
The season’s second episode signals that Hawley will probably make great use of the “Fargo” template. But three seasons in, it has to be more of a challenge to take similar characters, situations and sensibilities, all of which are narrowly defined, and make them feel completely fresh. For now, though, we’ll give Fargo the benefit of a very slight doubt.
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Apr 17, 2017
Season 3 Review:
The hallmarks of a Hawley show are wonderfully offbeat yet endlessly intriguing characters, boldly innovative visual flourishes, a somewhat antic sense of humor, marvelously textured universes, compelling performances and whip-smart writing. Are all of these elements to be found in the immediately riveting third-season opener of Fargo? Oh heck yah, youbetcha.
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Apr 14, 2017
Season 3 Review:
It’s a somewhat slower build--and there’s a seemingly non-sequitur prologue to wade through at the start--but eventually this Fargo premiere suggests reason for excitement for the new season. But then episode two comes along and also fails to ignite the addictive interest of past installments, so this year’s Fargo will require a wait-and-see approach.
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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 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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ColliderApr 10, 2017
Season 3 Review:
More than anything, though, Fargo’s collection of stellar actors again this year makes every scene a delight to watch. Coon is staid and inscrutable, Winstead is electric and seductive, McGregor finds likability and venerability for this characters in ways we wouldn’t expect, and so forth. It’s a showcase that, matched with the show’s sly humor, produces exceptional television.
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