Somewhere in the depths of the Minnesotan wilderness, two men drag a third into the center of a frozen lake. Accompanied by the saccharine twang of country music, they set about sawing a large hole in the ice. Job done, they spend what seems like an eternity attempting to bundle their frantically struggling victim under the waves. At long last he gives up the ghost and sinks, wide eyed, to his watery grave. The men brush themselves down with an air of relief, and stroll back to civilization in search of the nearest bar.

After 20 long years, we're finally back in the world of Fargo, and it’s not a moment too soon.  At times hilariously quirky, at times deeply unsettling, Noah Hawley's reworking of the Coen brothers' iconic 1996 film into a ten-part television series is inspired, riffing effortlessly upon the blackly comic cocktail of hysteria, violence, and small town sentimentality that we have grown to know and love from its first incarnation. So far, the series has been a delight for fans and newcomers alike, managing to preserve the spirit of the original whilst delving further into its darkly madcap universe. When they made the original film, the directors acted like magpies, picking and choosing from real life episodes of violence to weave a new mythology. With its cunning nods to its source material, the TV series uses the film itself to continue this tradition of pastiche. The more we watch, the more we become ensconced in the Coens' fantastic, deeply unsettling, and utterly fabricated artistic vision.

The gorgeously bleak cinematography of the original film is replicated in full glory, all snowy pines, clustered log cabins, and lone cars tracking across Minnesotan landscape. It's a setting best summed up by the Coens' own childhood remembrances of the Midwest as "like Siberia but with more family-style restaurants". Pancake houses jostle alongside dingy brothels. Balaclava clad hit men invade suburban bathrooms. McDonald’s, Sunny D, and adderall are the orders of the day, as residents desperately try to cover up their nagging unease at the violent horrors taking place on their doorstops with an all american chirpiness. "Darn tootin", remarks a deputy, on discovering a the site of a triple homicide: “I think I’m gonna barf.”

The time-span of a television series allows Hawley to introduce more oddball characters that were the lifeblood of the original film. A cheerful hobo dispenses "knapsacks for the zombie apocalypse" from his unmarked van. Stavros Milos, the "supermarket king" is the Don Corleone of small town consumerism, conducting dodgy dealings from behind the innocuous facade of a chain of convienience stores, fat spilling out from the confines of his velour tracksuit. To replace the film's original bungling assasins Carl and Gaer, we have a new motley double-act: "Mr Wrench" and "Mr Numbers." In his fringed jacket and dinky cowboy boots, “Mr Numbers” is a triumph of absurdity, a kind of malevolent Joe Buck minus the cowhide suitcase. Adam Goldberg’s Mr Wrench is a darkly brooding, sinister update on Steve Buscemi's kinda funny lookin’ Carl, who specializes in calmly explaining to his victims the method of their dispatch: “you just swallow your tongue then you die like a fish.”

Ultimately, it is Billy Bob Thornton's drifter Malvo that is the most compelling addition to the cast. He is a lone wolf who thrives on exploiting the sheer idiocy of the people he encounters. Despite wearing a ridiculous turtle neck sweater and trademark Coen brothers goofy haircut, Malvo is sinister, with blank eyed unfathomability and a cryptically ironic take on being ‘the bad guy’. “This is highly irregular” remarks the postal worker tasked with delivering him a mysterious acquisition. “Nom” sighs Malvo, “highly irregular is the time I found a human foot in the toaster oven. This is just odd.”

Further, to introducing a host of brilliant new faces, the TV series also provides more potential for character development; something which the film was crying out for. In Martin Freeman's Lester Nygaard, the downtrodden insurance salesman and antihero of the series, we see strong echoes of Jerry Lundegaard, the put upon car salesman of the original. Like Jerry, Lester is an object of ridicule to his family. On noting his purchase of a 12 gauge shotgun "for protection", his wife mocks his attempt to transform himself into a hot-blooded American male: “If anyone could shoot themselves in the face with an unloaded firearm", she quips, " it's you.” “Sometimes", admits his younger brother, "I tell my friends you’re dead". However, as we observe Lester evolving from episode to episode, we sense him gradually embarking on a kind of Walter White-esque departure from the charade of suburban masculinity which Jerry could only dream of, contenting himself instead by scribbling in impotent rage over his "I LOVE GOLF" notepad.

Yet much of the joy of this TV series comes from trying to figure out where on earth the plot is going before the next installment airs. So far, as the series has progressed, it has grown progressively darker. Violence is no longer solely a thing of madcap hilarity. Pig's blood runs from showers. Beloved pets are murdered. Malvo’s kidnap victim escapes the trunk of his car and runs, screaming, into the wilderness. Characters are hopelessly isolated, eking out lives of quiet desperation marooned amongst the clutter of kitsch decor and overlooked by furled stars and stripes. Their singsong "oh yahs" begin to look about as effective as putting a band aids onto broken bones.

Our first instinct as viewers is to scorn at the blind optimism of these small town luddites. "This is a nice neighbourhood", a passerby informs Malvo: "someone gets sick, someone dies we bring a casserole.”

And yet, somehow, it’s hard not to warm to their tenacity. Their insistence on glossing over the evils which stalk their lives in the varied forms of contact killers, spider bites, and terminal diseases becomes less like naivety and more like stubborn bravery, less like the mentality of the small town schmuck than that of the quiet stoic. In a series which adopts the strongly ironic tone of postmodern entertainment, there is something refreshing about characters in Fargo who refuse to succumb to this cynicism themselves. Take Molly Solverson, the rookie cop who provides the only hint of integrity in a department staffed by dumpy, inanely grinning cops, or the reaction of the original film’s heavily pregnant police chief upon discovering Carl having just run his best friend through a woodchopper: "I just don’t understand it. It’s a beautiful day."