Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Martin Freeman, Bob Odenlirk, Keith Carradine, Joey King, Kate Walsh, Russell Harvard, Tom Musgrave, Stephen Root, Helena Mattsson, Julie Ann Emery, Rachel Blanchard, Susan Park, Gary Valentine, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Marty Antonini, Liam Green, Atticus Dean Mitchell, Leslie Maynes, James D. Hopkin, Christopher Rosamond, Dan Redican, Richard Sherry, Jade Davis, Carrie Coak, Jennifer Copping, Dayle Krall, Barkhad Abdirahman.
The Devil will only allow you to turn so much before he slides back into view to remind you of what you once were, the worm that turns just enough to see a glimpse of a golden future before the Devil smiles and reminds you of the villainy you sought and reaped capital from. Just as Lester Nygaard finally sees that his life has changed for the better, that his plan of framing his brother for the murder of his wife, getting revenge on his now dead high school bully by sleeping with his widow and generally becoming the man he believes he should be, who should he see across a crowded room a year after the events, none other than Lorne Malvo.
The eighth episode, The Heap, of this gripping series felt for a while as if it was on wind down, Noah Hawley perhaps prolonging as best as he could the conclusion to this American drama. However like all great writers, there was a snake in the bag that not even Ovid’s Tiresias could have foreseen. The urge to bring all matters to head, to give the protagonists the ending in life they deserve to be happy after a prolonged investigation perhaps cynically in the mind of all watching Fargo. Yet the consequence of everybody’s actions, in some cases inaction, hasn’t yet been fully dealt with.
The realisation that Lester Nygaard can never truly be calm or happy with his new life for as long as Lorne Malvo lives somewhere in the background of his memory a real gripping moment in the series as a whole. The deaths may have finally stopped, the slaughter of many seemingly accounted for, but all the while Lorne Malvo lives, their will be many who live with the fear of what occurred in that desolate area of the United States.
The credit is always due to a writer who can make at least half an episode feel as if the watch is dying, the final tick and tock on its way and yet with a stroke of his pen deliver a chilling reminder that not all yet is over, for this the true hero, the stand out person in a series of marvellous characterisation is the writer himself Noah Hawley.
Perhaps it is not Lorne Malvo who is the Devil, the serpent in the heart of Death but the writer himself, the writer who has taken everybody on a ride of their lives.
Ian D. Hall