Chris Rock (PHOTO: David Shankbone, Flickr CC)
I wasn’t sure I’d get to fire up the MinnesotaBrown “Fargo” Review again. After all, showrunner Noah Hawley had said he’d only bring the show back if he found a good story to tell.
Well, apparently he has. And he’s brought in a heavy-hitter from the comedy world to headline the cast.
FX has announced “Fargo” Season 4, starring Chris Rock.
From a story published in Variety:
Described as a story of “immigration and assimilation and the things we do for money,” season 4 of “Fargo” is set in 1950 in Kansas City, Missouri, where two criminal syndicates — one Italian, one African-American — have struck an uneasy peace. To cement their peace, the heads of both families have traded their eldest sons. Rock will play the head of one of the syndicates, who has surrendered his son to his enemy, and who must raise his son’s enemy as his own. But then the head of the Kansas City mafia goes into the hospital for routine surgery and dies — and everything changes.
This sounds like a prequel to Season 2, set in the 1970s. That story ended with Bokeem Woodbine’s Mike Milligan climbing the ladder of a Kansas City crime syndicate, only to find himself trapped in middle management. That story showed flashbacks to a grittier 1950s mob environment, one that would provide fertile ground for a new story.
One of the big questions is the role Minnesota will play in the new story. Early media coverage fails to even mention our state. Hawley has said that “Fargo” is fundamentally a Midwestern show, and we have that element with Kansas City. Will the new series bring us to the program’s roots in the North Star State? It certainly must, but we may find the Minnesota elements even more muted here.
Either way, I’ll be here to review the show. And I’ll still be hoping that the Iron Range makes an appearance at some point. Though I might have to write that script myself.
Read my reviews of the first three seasons of “Fargo” at my review page.
Great news!
I also see that Hawley is scheduled to work on a TV series adaptation of “The Hot Rock,” the classic Donald Westlake comedy crime novel which was made into a classic 1972 movie written by William Goldman (“Butch Cassidy,” “Marathon Man,” “All the President’s Men,” “The Princess Bride,” etc.) and starring Robert Redford at the head of an outstanding cast. He is also writing an short series adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel “Cat’s Cradle,” directing a movie for theaters starring Natalie Portman as well as two other theatrical movies, and working on several other ongoing projects.
So he is not just doing this because he needs work, presumably meaning that this is a project that attracted him for its interest and quality. The fact that Chris Rock is involved underlines that point.