There is at least one significant link - you'll hoot in recognition - that could be the linchpin of the anthology. We're looking forward plenty of long, cold winters.
All of the performances here, from Billy Bob Thornton to Martin Freeman to Colin Hanks to newcomer Allison Tolman, are strong enough to almost make you forget the original altogether (especially if it's been way too long since your last viewing).
There's a considered cleverness and kindness to his [Hawley] scripts that would never fit into the tight margins of a motion picture; it lights this Fargo from within.
Fargo has a few things in common with their 1996 film of the same name: the frigid small-town setting, a plucky female cop, a desperate man, a twisted sense of humor and a rising body count.
The series, is funnier than the film, more bleakly so. The Coens got brilliant performances out of their film actors and they do here as well -- Thornton especially, who is a magnificent sociopath-monster. Freeman simply reminds everyone how good he is.
He [Hawley] makes us care about a wildly exaggerated situation involving characters who, by themselves, would be either 1) dull, 2) psychotic or 3) dumb as a stack of snowballs.
The acting and directing are uniformly strong, and the script, by Noah Hawley, proves that everyone who has ever described the Coen brothers' sensibility as "inimitable" was wrong.
The TV Fargo establishes itself as its own wonderful thing that is connected to the movie without being a recreation of it, and that doesn't seem unworthy of the name.