How ‘Fargo’ creator Noah Hawley crafted a new season for our ‘post-Minnesota nice’ era

Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who is excited to see “Fargo” back again — oh yeah, you betcha!

The Emmy-winning FX anthology crime series has returned for a fifth season, starring Jon Hamm, Juno Temple, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Joe Keery in a twisty new story that, like the Coen Brothers classic that inspired the show, centers on a spousal kidnapping gone awry. Series creator Noah Hawley spoke with Screen Gab about shifting this installment toward the present day and continually pushing the show’s boundaries.

Also in Screen Gab No. 109, three streaming recommendations for your weekend, including director Todd Haynes’ provocative new Netflix drama “May December,” and our critic’s guide to this year’s holiday movies and TV specials.

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(Photo illustration by Lincoln Agnew / For The Times; photographs by Prime Video, Lifetime, Warner Bros. Discovery, Peacock, Apple TV+, Disney+)

From ‘Elf’ to Selena Gomez to ’80s divas: 24 movies and TV specials to watch this holiday season: Our TV critic selects a few holiday specials, movies and series to watch this season, including “The Santa Clauses” Season 2, “Doctor Who” specials, “Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas” and more.

A Christmas tree contest and a hunt to uncover Mel’s father: The holidays come to ‘Virgin River’: The showrunner and a set designer on Netflix’s “Virgin River” discuss how they prepared for the pair of holiday-themed episodes that will round out the fifth season of the series.

HBO’s ‘Love Has Won’ shows how cult leader Amy Carlson went from McDonald’s manager to mummy: Director Hannah Olson talks about her new three-part HBO docuseries, “Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God,” chronicling Amy Carlson’s bizarre journey from a mother of three working at McDonald’s to a self-proclaimed divine being and leader of a cult-like group.

Like his Oscar, Ke Huy Quan’s ‘Loki’ role was a dream come true: ‘It puts a big smile on my face’: Hot off his Oscar win for “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” Quan talks about his starring role as Ouroboros in Season 2 of the Disney+ series “Loki,” his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times

Albert Brooks pictured in the documentary “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.”

(HBO)

“Albert Brooks: Defending My Life” (HBO/Max)

Rob Reiner has made a documentary about his high school friend Albert Books, the comedian, filmmaker, actor and author, whose concepts and characters can make even Andy Kaufman look cuddly and crowd-pleasing. It’s a highly thorough and entertaining, which is to say hilarious, career resume, including clips from talk and variety show appearances, the short films he made for “Saturday Night Live” in its infancy, his own self-starred films and his appearances in other people’s projects, from “Taxi Driver” to “Finding Nemo” to “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” But just as valuable is the easy conversation between Reiner and Brooks, septuagenarian old pals who grew up in show business families — when Brooks, whose father was the radio and film comic known as Parkyakarkus, was still in high school, Reiner’s father, Carl, declared on television that he was the funniest person he knew. Brooks, and his excruciatingly obsessive characters, are almost by definition not for everyone — or else he might have made more movies — but cinephiles will be paying attention to his work as long as comedy is a fit subject for study. — Robert Lloyd

“Hard Knocks: In Season with the Miami Dolphins” (HBO, MAX)

We’re only two episodes in, but “Hard Knocks: In Season with the Miami Dolphins” is already far more engaging than this year’s earlier edition, which followed Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets in training camp before the quarterback tore his Achilles four snaps into the NFL season. Unlike other installments of the series, such as last year’s in-season version with the Arizona Cardinals, this one actually features a contender, with the Dolphins among the top teams in the AFC poised to make a playoff run. The series’ star isn’t one of the players but rather the team’s colorful coach Mike McDaniel. (Don’t miss his retelling of the accidental roundhouse kick he took on the sidelines of a recent game.) But it’s not all laughs. The second episode’s story arc about how linebacker Jaelan Phillips medically retired following multiple injuries then worked his way back to having a breakout season will hit you in the feels. — Vanessa Franko

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Everything you need to know about the film or TV series everyone’s talking about

Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in “May December.”

(Francois Duhamel / Netflix)

“May December” seems likely to attract the most attention — perhaps the word is rubbernecking — for its juicy premise: Ambitious actor Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) posts up on a sleepy island outside Savannah, Ga., to study her latest subject, Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), a middle-school teacher who became a tabloid sensation 20 years ago for sleeping with her student, now husband, Joe (Charles Melton). But fixating on the facts of the scandal at its center, much less its real-life inspirations, would sorely undersell director Todd Haynes’ strange confection, premiering Friday on Netflix. Working by creative instinct and logistical necessity with a new set of collaborators — including screenwriter Samy Burch, cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt and, via Marcelo Zarvos, “The Go-Between” composer Michel Legrand — Haynes abandons the white-knuckle control of “Safe” or “Far From Heaven” for what may be his most brazen experiment in tone, careening from the absurd to the abject with the confidence of a drift racer. Indeed, in a career long defined by its embrace of emotion, whether twisting it, throttling it, or turning it upside down, “May December” asserts itself as one of Haynes’ most dauntless visions, sizzling like a live wire on the street after a storm. By the time it reaches its climactic moment, when its titanic leads briefly, unforgettably converge, it also establishes itself as a stone-cold, shockingly funny stunner, and one of the most exciting movies of the year. — Matt Brennan

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Juno Temple as Dorothy “Dot” Lyon and Sienna King as Scotty Lyon in “Fargo.”

(Michelle Faye / FX)

With five seasons and nearly a decade under its belt, Noah Hawley’s “Fargo” (FX, Hulu), which returned last week, has long since carved a distinct path from Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 film. Since premiering in 2014, the limited series’ independent-but-interlocking seasons have ventured as far afield as 1950s and the 1970s, Kansas City and Los Angeles, all while retaining a sometimes flamboyant sense of style and tone — and its appeal for big-name actors eager for a role to sink their teeth into. Shortly before the premiere of Season 5, which finds a conservative North Dakota sheriff (Jon Hamm) in pursuit of a Minnesota housewife with a secret past (Juno Temple), Hawley stopped by Screen Gab to talk about setting this “Fargo” story in 2019, what he’s learned from making the series and what he’s watching. — Matt Brennan

READ MORE: ‘We live in “Tiger King” America now’: Noah Hawley on the return of ‘Fargo’

What have you watched recently that you are recommending to everyone you know?

“Top Boy” [Netflix] crafted a complex, visceral character story inside a satisfying crime genre framework.

What is your go-to “comfort watch,” the movie or TV show you go back to again and again?

“Moonstruck” [Fubo, Paramount+]: Perfect cast, perfect script, never fails.

I’ve been fascinated by “Fargo’s” relationship to history, recent and distant, since Season 2 made mention of Jim Jones, gas shortages, Love Canal and Pol Pot. What led you to set Season 5 in 2019? Whether from the vantage point of today or while you were writing it, what interests you about that particular moment?

2019 was as close as I could get to the present without running into COVID. What I was interested in exploring is what I would call “post-Minnesota nice,” the turn middle America took away from the politeness of the social contract and toward open conflict. In the last few years the sunny passive aggression of the movie “Fargo” [Max] has been replaced by brawls at school board meetings. What does the basic decency of the world in which the show is set look like when people stop pretending everything’s fine and start distrusting each other?

By the time this season concludes, it’ll have been (nearly) 10 years since Season 1 premiered. What’s the aspect of your approach to TV that’s changed most dramatically since then, and how so?

Over the years I’ve pushed a lot of boundaries for what a “Fargo” story could be — both in scale and structure. Year 4’s period American crime epic with 23 main characters felt like the right ambition for that moment, but this year I wanted to simplify and tell a tight, edge-of-your-seat story. What I’ve learned primarily over the last 10 years is how astoundingly flexible this show called “Fargo” can be.