Executive produced by the Coen Brothers and loosely based on their 1996 film of the same, Fargo debuted on SBS One last week. The show takes its cues from the ‘world’ of the original film with icy landscapes, suffocating small town manners and sporadic fits violence delivered with grim, black humour.

The original cast included WIlliam H. Macy, Steve Buscemi and Frances McDormand, who won an Academy Award for best actress for her role as a pregnant police officer in the movie. The film also won an Oscar for best original screenplay for the Coens.

While the Coens are on board the new production, its director Noah Hawley who has written and directed the TV version of the story.

Starring Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade), Martin Freeman (The Office) and newcomer Allison Tolman, who plays the female lead, Deputy Molly Solverson, Fargo is two episodes in and is already attracting huge applause for its quirky black comedy.

We recap the first two episodes.

Episode 1 – The Crocodile’s Tears

Malvo

The series premieres with Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton, sporting a Lloyd Christmas haircut), wrecking his car on a quiet freeway on a wintry night.

Lester (Martin Freeman) and Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) talk murder in Fargo. Photo: Supplied

His boot opens and a man gagged and in his underpants jumps out and runs off into the snowy landscape.  Malvo, having been injured in the car accident, is left to recuperate in the small town of Bemidji, Minnesota.  Malvo, it turns out, is a darkly philosophical hit man and small time Iago, who – for no particular reason – interferes in the lives of complete strangers.

Lester

While Malvo is being treated at the local hospital he meets Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman, doing his best William H. Macy).  Lester is a put upon insurance salesman who is treated with contempt by his own friends and family (especially his wife, Pearl). Lester’s only response to these indignities is it to be achingly polite.

A run in with an old school bully Sam Hess leads to a trip to the emergency room. Hearing his story, Malvo sneers at Lester’s weakness and offers to murder Hess.  Lester is incredulous, but their meeting ends ambiguously.

Malvo promptly sets about finding and killing Hess with a knife to the back of the head and then – just for kicks – sets Hess’ two dim-witted sons against one another in the settlement of his estate. Lester confronts Malvo over Hess’ murder and is treated to the hit man’s bleak moral philosophy (there are no rules).

Deputy Molly Solverson

Deputy Solverson (Allison Tolman) and Chief Thurman (Shawn Doyle) are the town cops in Fargo. Photo: Supplied

Deputy Solverson (Tolman) reports to Chief Thurman on the events surrounding the abandoned car, the half naked man found frozen to death & the murder of Sam Hess. They learn that someone at the hospital saw someone with head injuries similar to those from the wreck was talking to Nygaard about Hess.

Back at the Lester’s, Pearl torments Lester while he is trying to repair the washing machine.  After she provokes him one time too many, he picks up a hammer and beats her to death. Desperate, he calls Malvo for help. Following the lead from the hospital, Chief Thurman shows up at Lester’s house, and quickly discovers Pearl’s body – but not before Malvo arrives and kills him. Malvo disappears and Nygaard knocks himself out to make the murder appear like a break in.

As Police Officer Gus Grimly (played by Tom Hanks son Colin) speaks with his daughter over the radio, he pulls over a speeding car. It is Malvo. He tells Grimly that there are some roads you don’t want to go down, obliquely threatening the officer and his family. Grimly relents and gets back in his car.

Episode 2 – The Rooster Prince

Lester

In the wake of episode one’s dramatic conclusion, everyone (for the time being) has bought Lester’s staged home invasion. After returning home from Pearl’s funeral, Lester grows haunted by the first episode’s carnage. Traces of the murders still linger in the house everywhere and Lester grows uneasy. He even momentarily cries into one of his wife’s sweaters. He eventually takes up his brother’s offer to come and live with his family and makes plans to sell his house

Deputy Solverson

Solverson continues her investigation of the Hess murder. She (correctly) sees a link between Hess and the massacre at the Nygaard’s. But with the chief now gone, she has to report to the moronic Bill Oswalt (the great Bob Odenkirk), who sees no connection between the incidents. They question Lester, who bumbles his way through the interview, growing increasingly anxious as Solverson figures out what actually happened, before Oswalt bungles the interview. Solverson, persists and the increasingly fragile Lester almost cracks, until Oswalt orders her off the case. In the meantime, Solverson confers with her café owner father, who laments the dark realities of her work and what she is exposed to – “You need to see what’s good in the world, because if you don’t, how are you gonna live.”

Oliver Platt as supermarket kingpin Stavros Milos. Photo: Supplied

Malvo

Malvo is hired by a supermarket chain owner, Stavros Milos (Oliver Platt), to find an anonymous black mailer, who is demanding $43,000. Malvo questions the man’s soon to be ex-wife (posing as an estate lawyer), while she is working with her personal trainer.  After finding a splotch of fake tan on the blackmail note, Malvo suspects the personal trainer to be involved.

Milos

In a smart nod to the movie, a flashback sees a younger Milos down on his luck and stumbling upon the hidden cash Steve Buscemi’s character, Carl, buried at the end of the film. This explains how Milo has ended up owning the supermarket chain and ties up any loose ends from the film. “When I came up with Stavros Milos, who is a very blustery Coen autocrat, and that there was a blackmail scheme [where] Malvo would come in to figure out who was blackmailing him,” creator Hawley tells TVGuide.com, “the idea just came to me that there was a secret there and that the secret was that he had found the money. I think that was always something that was really compelling about the movie to me, the idea of that money left there to be discovered one day.”

Mr Numbers & Mr Wrench

In response to Hess’ murder, his big city associates send a bizarre two-man team to find his killer: one is a deaf mute, the other is Adam Goldberg. As the two go around playing detective, they incorrectly finger a man at the strip club the night Hess was murdered. Once they learn he is not their guy, they take him out and bury him beneath an iced over pond anyway

Grimly

Grimly is still shaken from his unsettling encounter with Malvo. As we see his very simple domestic life with his daughter as they share burgers and she questions him on the ethical

Mr Wrench and Mr Numbers (Russell Harvard and Adam Goldberg). Photo: Supplied

obligations of his job. Like the original Fargo, the violent criminality is balanced out with very warm domestic lives. Solverson and her father, Grimly and his daughter all managed to evoke deeply felt emotion amongst all the comic violence.

Other observations

– The show claims to be based on real events set in 2006. The film Fargo made similar claims of being fact, but was in fact completely fabricated by the Coen brothers.

– Billy Bob Thornton is excellent in bringing on his full deadpan Bad Santa mode as he antagonises the very polite locals that he encounters -threatening the mail clerk and then sharing stupid jokes with the supermarket owners simple minded son was ridiculous.

– In every minor role there is another recognisable face. Bob Odenkirk, Adam Goldberg, Oliver Platt – even Hess’ widow is played by Grey’s Anatomy’s Kate Walsh.

Episode three airs on Thursday, May 8 on SBS One.