Life and death in the Midwest: Hamm, Temple join ‘Fargo’ for fifth season
As anyone living in or visiting Alberta this past October can testify, the province is a great place to film a snowy series. And while the cast and crew of “Fargo” had long since finished filming by the time Calgary received its most recent unseasonable dumping of snow, TV audiences are just now about to witness the magic (and crime — lots of crime) for themselves. Season 5 of “Fargo” begins Tuesday, Nov. 21, with back-to-back episodes on FX. Episodes are available to stream the following day on Hulu.
Despite filming in Canada, the current season of the series created by Noah Hawley (“Legion”) is set primarily in North Dakota (as indicated by its title). Expected to run for 10 episodes, “Fargo’s” fifth season is set in 2019, making it the series’ most recent timeframe to date. (For those interested, seasons 1 through 4 take place in 2006, 1979, 2010 and 1950, respectively.)
Those unfamiliar with “Fargo” may not know that the critically acclaimed series is based on the 1996 film of the same name by the Coen Brothers (“Blood Simple,” 1984), which starred William H. Macy (“Shameless”) and Steve Buscemi (“Boardwalk Empire”) alongside Frances McDormand (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” 2017) in her Academy Award-winning role as police officer Marge Gunderson. Like the film, FX’s “Fargo” is a black comedy, but rather than follow the same storyline as the film, the series opted to present its content as an anthology, jumping through timelines and to various locations in order to tell a series of related tales, each as unsettling — yet somehow inviting — as the next.
Season 5 stars Juno Temple (“Ted Lasso”) as Dorothy (Dot) Lyon, a Minnesota-based housewife who appears to lead a normal, happy lifestyle. But, when Dot ends up getting into trouble with the local authorities, her past comes back to haunt her — a past that is much more sinister than anyone would have expected from this average midwestern woman. As she tries to sort out the best course of action, Dot is pursued by North Dakota Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm, “Mad Men”), Deputy Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris, “New Girl”) and a mysterious man named Ole Munch (Sam Spruell, “The Martian,” 2015).
Jennifer Jason Leigh (“The Woman in the Window,” 2021) joins the main cast as Dot’s well-off mother-in-law, while “Stranger Things’” Joe Keery and “Never Have I Ever’s” Richa Moorjani step into the roles of the sheriff’s son, Gator Tillman, and Deputy Indira Olmstead, respectively.
Meanwhile, David Rysdahl (“Oppenheimer,” 2023), Jessica Pohly (“Stalker”), Nick Gomez (“She-Hulk: Attorney at Law”), Lukas Gage (“The White Lotus”) and Dave Foley (“The Kids in the Hall”) star in recurring roles throughout the newest season.
And although the producers and casting directors once again managed to snag some serious star power for “Fargo,” many viewers and critics wondered if the series would be returning at all. On Nov. 29, 2022, the day the Season 4 finale aired, series creator Hawley was asked about his intentions to continue the anthology.
“The danger is always that you’re going to stay at the dance a little too long,” Hawley replied, “so I have to put a lot of it in place in my head and really make sure that it’s worthy of joining these 41 hours.”
Hawley continued, stating: “I don’t want to try and make another one [season] unless I think, ‘Oh, we have to make this one. It’s the best one yet.’”