Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Martin Freeman, Joey King, Julie Ann Emery, Bob Odenkirk, Adam Goldberg, Russell Harvard, Oliver Platt, Kelly Holden Basher, Dean Barrett, Dave Brown, Shawn Doyle, Barry Flatman, Kirk Heuser, Glen Howerton, Brendan Hunter, Greg Lawson, Roger LeBlanc, Gordon S. Miller, Byron Noble, Chantel Perron,  John Treleaven, Gary Valentine.

God, so Stavros Milos believes, is watching over him, Policewoman Molly Solverson is watching over Lester Nygaard, her boss and Gus Grimly, Mr. Numbers and Mr. Wrench are watching Lester Nygaard as well and Lorne Malvo, well he seems to be pulling the strings behind everybody’s back.

Halfway through the tale of Fargo and certain facts are just revealing themselves from out of the gloom. Like a spiders web which is only seen when peered up close and when the clue of its existence is when it shimmers with the early morning dew or when the frost freezes it to the point in which the spider dies, evidence is only seen in Fargo when it wants to be known. Other times the evidence is gone before the person even knows it was there.

With the fifth episode, The Six Ungraspables,  opening prior to the events that made Lester Nygaard’s life become as wanted as a runner’s up medallion in the Super Bowl final or a Minnesota winter, it was possible to get a further glimpse into the way in which his existence was like that of the spider web, only there to catch flies. It is a part that Martin Freeman has seemingly taken great delight in and in the flashing sequence of events, in which only that all seeing eye of the American economy can ever think paying 55 Dollars for a pair of socks is good business when it then gets a free shotgun thrown in, that predates the killing his wife and that of the local chief of police, Mr. Freeman captured the bemused Mid-Westerner perfectly and when the action followed on to his incarceration in the holding cells of the police station, that unravelling which has been there since episode one spilled over to great effect.

If God, in Supermarket King and extortion target Stavros Milos’s mind is looking over him, then Lorne Malvo is really enjoying plotting and judging the citizens who come between him and his so far unexplained reasoning.  If Martin Freeman is playing his part well, as is Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks and Bob Odenkirk, then Billy Bob Thornton is giving one of the best performances of his life on screen as the devilish Malvo.

The crisp deep snow that falls on the flatlands of the mid United States is one that can bury a lot of secrets and when the whole town it seems has them, it is going to need a lot of snow to hide them from Malvo.

Ian D. Hall