When TV writer/ showrunner Noah Hawley (Bones, Legion) decided to adapt the Coen brothers’ 1996 film Fargo into an anthology series for TV, he knew he had a formidable task on his hands. Currently in the fourth season, it casts a core group of characters across a range of times and places with a few more additions along the way.

Fargo has moved far beyond the frozen borders of the small town in North Dakota and tackles the meaty issues of racism, equality, and immigration with sharp teeth in this season. There is a poetry to the brutal truths of America – united and segregated simultaneously. A country of mass migration from other countries and states escaping harsh realities and chasing the elusive American dream.

Migration can be both a crossroad and a collision of cultures

The setting of this season was the history of organized crime in Kansas City, Missouri; specifically November 1950 between two groups of migrants – Blacks fleeing the cruelty of Jim Crow’s South and Italian-Americans in search of a better life.

It is a dramatized version of a familiar story of two warring crime syndicates battling for control of their patch. Dramatization is not necessarily a work of fiction. It is an exploration of finding your place in a new and often hostile land.

Noah Hawley

“If America is a nation of immigrants, then how does an immigrant become American?” This isn’t a trick question. Immigrants to a new world of the Mid-West are demanding to be treated equally. “Equal to what?” asks E’myri Crutchfield who plays the role of Ethelrida Pearl Smutny. The locals? Clearly these meaty questions require an extended answer.

In view of the three previous seasons of Fargo, Noah Hawley had a lot of preparation to do before season 4 was filmed. “Fargo is a show about Middle America. We owe it to the people of that region to tell good stories.”

Using another Coen brothers film Raising Arizona as his blueprint, Hawley quickly introduced many new and recurring characters and their backstories in the opening scenes including Loy Cannon (Chris Rock), Oraetta Mayflower (Jessie Buckley), Josto Fadda, and (Jason Schwartzman).

There are over twenty characters in this season, each with their own sense of tragedy. Each with their own sense of purpose and determination to be in control and cements the position in Kansas City. Juggling so many characters and giving each sufficient screen time was a formidable task. “Revealing character was often done on the fly,” confessed Hawley.

Racism is firmly dyed into America’s social fabric whether it be Irish, Italian or African-American communities. It was peculiar time in the fifties. Mass migration from Southern Europe and blacks fleeing the Jim Crow South created a tinder box in America’s Midwest. Each wanted a slice of the American Pie. America is built on capitalism so it was their chance to carve out their place in its alternate economy – aka organized crime.

Despite focusing on Italian and Black racism in Kansas in 1950, the same issues still scar American society today. “The issue of immigration is about choices. Some choices were made voluntarily and some were made for them,” said Hawley.

Loy Cannon (Chris Rock)

The showrunner chose the post World War II decade to tell his story with a palpable sense of irony. “The fifties were romanticized. They are remembered as a time when everything was good and everyone was kind and polite,” said Hawley. In order to remind the audience that the good ‘ol days were ofter far from that, Ethelrida was forced to educate herself after being shut out of mainstream education. She taught herself French.

Fargo explored family loyalties. People needed to have their fears assuaged. They needed to know that each had each other’s back, except when each crime family vied for control. In order to show they meant business, each side offered their oldest son to serve the opposition like sacrificial lambs.

Fargo is an ambitious TV series which tells complex stories. It is the story of America. It may be uncomfortable in parts, but it’s real. “This is an act of patriotism. There is no greater act of patriotism than honesty,” proclaimed Hawley.