Ooooooh nelly, is this is ever gonna be good.
Easily one of, if not the, best new TV series of the past few years has been Noah Hawley‘s revelatory adaptation of ‘Fargo‘ which, despite trepidations about misrepresenting its Oscar-winning Coen Brothers pedigree, quickly found its own life as a brooding, absurd, gripping and darkly hilarious show that has delivered two seasons of utter chaos thus far.
The series took 2016 off (Hawley put a book out and subsequently worked on the script for the film adaptation), but shooting on the long-awaited third season is now set to begin in January, in the snowy expanses of Calgary.
Ahead of that, we now have a rounded off cast for the new series, and be damned if it isn’t bloody outstanding.
Previously the series announced names like Ewan McGregor (who will play identical twins Ray and Emmit Stussy, the latter of which is the self-style “Parking Lot King of Minnesota“), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ray’s girlfriend Nikki Swango, a “crafty and alluring recent parolee with a passion for competitive bridge“) and Carrie Coon (recently divorced police chief Gloria Burgle, trying to navigate this strange new world around her).
Now, to go along with that, we’ve got a raft of names that includes Jim Gaffigan, David Thewlis, Michael Stuhlbarg, Scoot McNairy, Shea Whigham, Karan Soni, Fred Melamed, and Thomas Mann.
You’d be forgiven if your brain isn’t a walking IMDB and doesn’t immediately pick all of those names up, but you’ve almost definitely seen their faces kicking around various other projects.
Gaffigan, a tenured stand-up comic who’s been in previous things like ‘Stranger Than Fiction,’ ‘Away We Go,’ and most recently in his eponymous series ‘The Jim Gaffigan Show,’ is picking up the role of Donny Mashman, a police deputy.
Thewlis, who you definitely recognise as Hogwarts staple Remus Lupin, will play V.M. Vargas, a “mysterious loner and true capitalist” who delivers bad news to McGregor’s Emmit.
McNairy (whose prior credits include ‘Argo,’ ‘Gone Girl,’ and a current starring role in ‘Halt and Catch Fire‘) fills the role of Maurice LaFey, a “stoner with a criminal past.”
Whigham, who you might remember as Nucky Thompson‘s brother Eli on ‘Boardwalk Empire,’ again steps into law enforcement getup as Moe Dammick, the chief of police of the rival Meeker County.
Stuhlbarg (‘A Serious Man,’ ‘Men in Black 3,’ ‘Doctor Strage‘) is Sy Feltz, Emmit’s right-hand man.
Soni (‘Safety Not Guaranteed,’ ‘Ghostbusters,’ the taxi driver from ‘Deadpool‘) is scientist Dr. Homer Gilruth.
Melamed (‘A Serious Man,’ ‘In A World…,’ ‘Lady Dynamite‘) will play Howard Zimmerman, a “mover and shaker” who can spin a hell of a yarn and turn a hell of a profit.
And finally, Mann (‘Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,’ ‘Project X‘) takes on the character Thaddeus Mobley, an award-winning science fiction author.
How the hell all these people manage to spin themselves together is beyond me, but you’re talking about a series that’s previously taken an insurance salesman, a horny widow, a small-town cop, a mailman, and an assassin, or a butcher and his bored wife, two psychopathic crime syndicates, and the law enforcement in between, and spun it all into chaotic televisual gold. So colour us K-E-E-N.
The series is set in 2010, meaning there is at least some chance of seeing familiar faces from the show’s outrageously good first season pop up.
It’s expected to hit screens before the end of 2017.
Source: Variety.
