Fargo will return for a second season, but you might not recognise it

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jul/22/fargo-true-detective-characters-anthology-series

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At the summer edition of the Television Critics Association conference in Los Angeles, where network execs hand out news about their upcoming series like breadcrumbs leading to the witch’s gingerbread house, we learned that FX renewed critically beloved show Fargo, which airs on Channel 4 in the UK.

When Fargo returns viewers may not immediately recognize it. John Landgraf, the CEO of the network, announced that the show would be back in fall 2015 (or later) with a new cast, a new set of characters, and a new story set in a different time period. Thanks to the name, the location is sure to stay the same. Yes, this is the great age of the “anthology series”, a program whose title, creators, and tone remain the same, but everything else changes from season to season. It’s like individual episodes of The Twilight Zone strung out for a really long time.

At its best the format allows for a total reboot every year, which can make one bad season very easy to rectify and will make getting new viewers a whole lot easier. (Why not give season two of Fargo a chance, when you don’t have to bother to watch all of season one to catch up?) But I think the biggest problem going forward is going to be scrapping all the characters. Sure, story is important, but the real thing that holds most dramas together is the characters.

Just look at some of the best dramas today. The Good Wife is named after an amazing character and has the best gallery of guest stars on television. Game of Thrones has such a sprawling cast many don’t even know all the characters’ names, but it’s their intricate interactions and our love and hatred of them that keeps people tuning in. The Walking Dead has offed many stars, but imagine if they bumped off Daryl? Twitter might literally catch on fire!

What I worry about with Fargo and, similarly, True Detective is that the newest caper won’t be satisfying enough to keep people hooked. The greatest draw of series television has always been watching characters change and evolve over time. Just look at Walter White. Breaking Bad is really just a drawn out character study watching one man’s descent into sociopathy and his vain attempt at redemption. Or maybe it’s just about spending time with people whose company we really enjoy, like Buffy and the rest of her vampire-slaying crew.

Fargo and True Detective will have to do the hard work of introducing us to a whole new batch of characters each year, which is a lot of heavy lifting especially in a short season of eight to 10 episodes. (I don’t worry so much about American Horror Story. Who cares which crazy lady with a weird accent Jessica Lange plays each season, as long as she keeps playing them?) Not that it can’t be done, or done well, but viewers have the expectation to keep seeing their favorite characters and wondering what happened to them. Of course, it’s not necessary to give audiences that solace, but eroding the conventions of more than 50 years of television convention is going to be tough.

The Wire, one of the best television series ever made, always had the best of both worlds. Ahead of its time in so many ways, The Wire was essentially an anthology show, focusing on a new world in Baltimore every season, whether it was the drug trade, city hall, the school system, or journalism. However, it kept around our favorite characters and continued their stories sometimes in conjunction with or contrast to the world that any particular season was examining. There was room to explore, but we always got our fix of Omar too, something to ground us in this new, unknowable world we’ve just been plunked into. There is some hope for Fargo, however. CEO Landgraf said at TCA: “I think we needed Billy Bob [Thornton to launch the show] but we don’t need somebody next year.

“Frankly, I think we can do it with unknowns.” It’s promising that the network is behind writer Noah Hawley’s vision that they’ll allow him to cast anyone he wants. (Or maybe they just want to save money in the casting budget.) Only time will tell how these shows will do in future seasons and what their legacies will be after they end, but it’s going to be a lot more difficult to be iconic if their icons keep changing year after year.