Broadcast Media: ‘Fargo’ and “Murder at the End of the World’ treats to watch

FX and Hulu have come to the rescue.

FX is airing two new programs as compelling as shows I’ve been missing, such as “Ozark” and “Better Call Saul.”

“Fargo,” now in Season 5, lives up to the quality, fun, and excitement of its first two series.

Juno Temple, known from “Ted Lasso,” is an immediate Emmy contender for her hilarious performance as a woman whose past is exposed after she Tasers two people while trying to escape the pandemonium of a suburban Minneapolis school board meeting.

“A Murder at the End of the World” turns Hercule Poirot and Daniel Craig’s “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion” character on their ears as “The Crown’s” Emma Corrin, playing an amateur detective with a flair for observation, logic, and technology works to solve the covered-up violent killing of her first partner in crime cracking just after they reunite at a genius’s retreat in an isolated corner of Iceland.

Both shows kept me watching and wanting more.

Patience is being tried since FX presents its programs episodically, which means a new installment appears every week, but you can’t stream the entire series no matter how hooked you are

As of today, two episodes of “Fargo” and three of “Murder at the End of the Earth” are available.

They originate on FX, but I’ve been watching them on Hulu. New episodes are unveiled every Tuesday through Dec. 19 for “Murder” and every Tuesday through Jan. 16 for “Fargo.”

“Fargo” has been a classic since the Coen brothers released the original film with Frances McDormand in 1996. The Coens serve as executive producers of the television series, but the main brain behind the program is Noah Hawley, who wrote and directed the two shows presented so far.

Unlike with other programs, each season of “Fargo” tells a different story, usually set on the Minnesota-North Dakota line and featuring what appear to be everyday people involved in criminal mayhem their wholesome Minnesota demeanors hide well.

Season 5 follows the usual paradigm but may be best of the skeins to date. Set in 2019, it centers on a housewife (Temple) who has been living peacefully and happily as a housewife and mother for 10 years before fingerprints distributed after a minor, almost perfunctory arrest alert unsavory folks of her whereabouts.

The woman, named Dot Lyon, is leading a double life, possibly a triple life as she’s worked hard to deceive her powerful, willful mother-in-law, played with usual aplomb by Jennifer Jason Leigh, that she is as simple and unassuming as a person can be.

Calamity shows Dot’s resourcefulness.

Once her picture and fingerprints make the round, people who have been searching for her come out of the woodwork.

Hawley once again weaves a complex but adroitly spun tale that involved a lot of attitudes, a lot of action, and lot of scenes that are comic and intensely serious at the same time.

That has been “Fargo’s” charm: Its ability to make you laugh at the eccentricity of its characters while worrying about some of them and being frightened at the level of evil to which some people will seek to reach their aims.

Hawley relies on the elements that have been “Fargo” so successful. While Dot is the central figure, her mother-in-law does not understand the situation before and makes conclusions that cause their own tension and intrigue.

Meanwhile, a North Dakota sheriff played by “Mad Men’s” Jon Hamm finds in Dot the woman who betrayed him more than a decade before and seeks to bring her back to his fold and dominance.

This makes for an engrossing three-ring circus as Dot proves to be part Rambo, part Houdini, and part McGyver while Hamm’s sheriff stews in his self-righteous and resentment that his moves are being completely countered, and Dot’s mother-in-law thinks Dot is acting odd to extract a large cut of the fortune she has amassed as the head of large national collection agency.

Every character is bigger than the prairie in which Season 5 is set.

Dot, like Temple as slight as an adult woman can be, impresses with her ability to get out of any situation, be it mortally dangerous or a vestige of family politics. Watching Dot’s mind work and seeing some of the traps she rigs up as a precaution brings about that combination of hilarity and tension that keeps “Fargo” so much fun.

Season 5 takes aim at false morality, as practiced by Hamm’s character, who takes a Biblical view of the world, especially as regards each gender’s role in a marriage and what laws his office chooses to enforce.

One funny scene involves FBI agents confronting the sheriff to ask why he doesn’t do anything about certain crimes being practiced with abandon in his fiefdom. Another that has more cringes than laughs is when the sheriff lectures a young man about how to treat his wife, then gives the man an example of what might happen to him if he doesn’t do as the sheriff bids.

“Fargo” is the most entertaining show of the year. So much goes on. The mix of absurdity and reality is a delight.

Temple, Leigh, Hamm, and others such as David Rysdahl as Dot’s husband, Joe Keery as the sheriff’s dimwitted son, and Richa Moorjani as “Fargo’s” de rigueur curious cop whose decency is likely to win the day, make each scene easy and rewarding to watch.

“A Murder at the End of the World” also has several plot lines working at once.

The main one involves Corrin’s character, Darby Hart, who writes a book about how she and a friend caught a serial killer, gains fame, and is invited along with others who have done interesting work to a billionaire’s retreat at a remote Iceland hotel he built essentially as a refuge for a day when he believes climate change will force people to migrate.

This outing is juxtaposed with the case that led to Darby’s book. In scenes that predate the retreat, we see Darby as an amateur but committed sleuth using her hacking skills to gain clues and teaming with a guy she meets online to solve a major crime, which has young women as its target.

You also see Darby as a girl going on cases with her father, who is a county coroner and teaches Darby about bruises and weaponry as he does his work.

Whether in Iowa, where Darby and her father live, or in Iceland, Darby is always finding incidents or signs that make her suspicious.

Her trip to Iceland is supposed to be intellectual and somewhat relaxed, but things change when the guy she bonded with while working the clues that led to her book
when, first, that guy, from whom she’s been estranged for six years, shows up at the retreat and, next, loses his life there by what Darby determines to be by foul play.

A lead character’s resourcefulness is again the hook. Writers Brit Marling, who also plays as major role in “Murder,” and Zal Batmanglij, are canny about how the present goings-on in the Midwest of Darby’s youth and in Iceland.

Seeing Darby’s development as a young girl and as an author who is a born detective is a joy of this  program. Watching a murder mystery unfold, especially when officially certain powers are denying that a murder occurred at all, is captivating.

“Murder” presents clues in such a way you can observe as much as Darby, make conclusions, and become nervous or confident as events play out.

Corrin is as riveting as the committed and enigmatic Darby as she was as Princess Diana in “The Crown.” Harris Dickinson, as her teenage colleague and murder victim, is delightfully nonchalant and engaging in his role.

Javed Khan has some wonderful scenes as a troubled environmentalist, and Clive Owen mixed charm and possible malevolence in a way that makes his character fascinating.

Also fascinating is some of the science and technology seen in “Murder,” especially when it refers to the colonization of the moon and advanced robotics.

AI also features prominently in “Murder.” One of my favorite exchanges comes when Darby is consulting her virtual assistant, Ray, about the retreat’s other guests.

Darby eventually asks, “Is anyone here normal?” to which Ray replies, “No. Not even you.”

Verizon Hall’s Orchestras of the World series

Since the moment “The Ed Sullivan Show” left the air, I’ve lamented its absence because of how thoroughly it acquainted American audiences with a range of entertainment that went from comedy acts and vaudeville to high cultural arts.

While Sullivan prevailed, people knew stars from classical music, opera, and ballet as well as they knew the Bob Hopes and Tony Bennetts from that time.

What made me think of this is a superb series of visiting orchestras the Kimmel Cultural Campus is bringing to Verizon Hall starting on 7:30 p.m. next Sunday when the Staatskapelle Berlin appears under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, taking the place of Daniel Barenboim who forewent the trip to Philadelphia because of illness.

Nézet-Séguin is the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and other ensembles including the Metropolitan Opera and the Orchestre Métropolitaine, which will figure
in a bit later.

Barenboim is one whose career spans long enough, he may have been seen on the “Ed Sullivan Show.”

The Staatskapelle Berlin has few peers when it comes to longevity.

It was formed in 1570, more than 100 years before the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach and centuries ahead of those upstarts Mozart and Beethoven.

On Sunday, the orchestra will perform two symphonies by Johannes Brahms, the passionate No. 3 and the tragic No. 4.

Verizon Hall’s Orchestras of the World series continues at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 5 when the Montréal’s aforementioned Orchestre Métropolitain appears in a concert conducted by Nézet-Séguin, this time by design.

Montréal is Nézet-Séguin’s hometown, and he is leading his hometown orchestra.

In addition to Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No 2” and Sibelius’s “Symphony No. 2,” the Orchestre Métropolitain will present a new work, “Controlled Burn” by Cris Derksen, who will be the featured cellist in a piece that blends electronic and classical sounds to give voice to the worldview of the indigenous Cree Nation.

Tony Siqi Yun is the featured pianist for the Rachmaninoff concerto.

The third orchestra, coming on Wednesday, May 1, is the Symphonieorchester des Bayernischen Rundfunks, known more popularly as the Bavarian Radio Orchestra from Munich.

It will be conducted by the always interesting Simon Rattle, a specialist in the works of favorite composer, Gustav Mahler, and will present Mahler’s “Symphony No. 6,” a particular treat because it gets fewer performances than “Symphonies 2, 4, 5 and 9” receive.

Please note that the orchestras are touring with their own musicians and will not be joined by members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which we’re lucky to hear from September to May at Verizon Hall.

In general, the Kimmel Cultural Campus makes up for the loss of “The Ed Sullivan Show” with its array of classical, jazz and popular concerts.

For more information about Orchestras of the World, visit www.kimmelculturalcampus.org or call 215-893-1999.