FARGO, C4, 10pm
I felt embarrassed for British TV drama when I watched this. Last week, new police dramas were trundled out on the BBC and ITV and they were unambitious and derivative: small, poky productions from imaginations which tread in the same tired circles: murdered women and tormented detectives, ad infinitum.
But – oh! – Fargo. Where else could it be set but Minnesota, its vicious weather and vast horizons just large and wild enough to host the cranky, comic, violent characters of this utterly brilliant drama?
Directed by the Coen brothers, this is the second series of Fargo and, like its TV and Hollywood predecessors, it’s a spectacularly clever crime caper set in the same snowy town and beginning with the same tantalising message: This is a true story.
Starring Ted Danson and Kirsten Dunst, the story is set in 1979. A local crime family suffer a setback when their patriarch has a stroke, leaving rivals free to move in and “liquidate” them. The youngest son tries to prove his mettle to his disdainful brothers who sneer, “You’re the comic in a piece of bubble gum.” Smarting and sulky, he follows a local judge to the Waffle Hut Diner, thinking he can persuade her to drop a case against a local businessman which would free him to pay his debts to the family. There follows a heart-stopping, incredible scene and, having just watched one episode, I am hooked already.
SCOT SQUAD, BBC1, 11.35pm The second series of the spoof Scottish police force is back, and the favourite characters are all back, such as Hugh McKirdie, the traffic cop, played by the wrestler, Grado; Ken Beattie, the nervous little Community Support Officer, and bombastic Chief Inspector Miekelson, but the best characters are the endlessly patient Officer Karen and the adoring Bobby who visits the station constantly. This week he offers her a shot of his stunt kite and reports that he’s “found a welly full of gloves.”
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