Tomorrow night Fargo is on tv. Not the movie, but a new, 10-part tv series.

How do they do that? Why do they do that?

Why take one of the most perfect movies ever made and ‘adapt’ it; re-work it, modify it, extend it, re-do and add bits on? Oh, for money, of course. Like Breaking Bad (didn’t see it), like True Detective (didn’t see it) and so many other tv series, they are massive and thus extremely lucrative.

I’d like to say that I’ve already set my record thingy and series linked it for Fargo.

Yet part of me, the purist, the artistic, the critical, the pompous, pretentious, movie-snob, tosser part, is totally opposed to this blatant exploitation of a true wonder of cinematic perfection.

Fargo is simply a wonderful film. Its dark. Darker than dark, almost black. It has sick moments (dead hit men in wood grinders) it has the best hero(ine) ever, in Frances McDormand’s oscar-winning heavily pregnant police detective. It has the wonderful William H. Macy as the nebach’s nebach. The man for whom nothing ever goes right. A plot that is simple and elegant, a plan that ‘can’t go wrong’ and yet it all turns to shit. And all in the frozen bleakness of North Dakota’s snowy wastelands. It even has Steve Buschemi at his most ugly, evil and nasty. And for a man who has made a career out of ugly and evil, that says a lot. Fargo is in my top 5 ever movies. Just don’t ask what the other 4 might be because they could become 40.

And so 20 hours of tv ‘based on’ a 100 minute movie. I remain unconvinced. So by monday morning I’ll either be totally hooked and addicted and saving up for the box-set, or appalled and disgusted of London, writing to the producers demanding my money back.

And although there’s so much more to discuss, Spurs are playing early today and we have to get going.

So happy Saturday, and may your best team win. As long as they play in blue and white at White Hart Lane.

A xxxx