It's back to the bleak wintry Midwest for the second season of Fargo (MNet Edge, Channel 102 DStv), the spin-off series from the Coen Brothers' hit 1996 movie of the same name, and what is easily the smartest show on TV at the moment.Set in 1979, and a prequel of sorts to the first season, it's ostensibly a gang war saga as Kansas City mobsters, led by creepy Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine), move to the country to muscle in on the operations of a Fargo crime family led by the Lady Macbeth-like matriarch Floyd Gerhardt (Jean Smart) after her husband Otto (Michael Hogan) suffers a debilitating stroke.One of their sons, Rye (Kieran Culkin) - fresh from committing a triple murder at a Waffle House (a very Coen-esque touch, that) - is knocked over in a bizarre hit- and-run accident by small town beautician Peggy Blumquist (Kirsten Dunst) and then subsequently stabbed to death by Peggy's butcher's apprentice husband, Ed (Jesse Plemens).There's a reprise of the infamous wood chipper scene in Fargo (the movie) as Ed gets rid of Rye's body - it's a scene that's not for the faint-hearted. Ed and Peggy's actions put them in the sights of both the Gerhardts and the mafiosi.Way out their depth, it is clear from the outset that, through no real fault of their own, bad things are going to happen to them.Rounding off the characters are Minnesota state trooper Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson) and county sheriff Hank Larsson (Ted Danson) who are the small-town law-enforcement officers faced with the Herculean task of trying to stem the tide of violence that's about to rip their communities apart.I mention all of this because the crime story is merely a frame on which a richly nuanced series, awash with subplots and macabre touches, is built.While the series explores a fiendishly complex and amoral world, there are humorous flourishes.The year 1979 was the last year of Jimmy Carter's presidency and Ronald Reagan's 1980s was just around the corner.Reagan (Bruce Campbell) even gets a walk-on cameo, and is seen in snippets of non-existent black and white movies. Here, then is a strange world view that is cynical and unsparing, a world where good and evil are clearly demarcated - but where the former is overwhelmed by the latter.Box popsWANTEDRiveting six-episode Australian series: two strangers, blue-collar worker Lola (Rebecca Gibney) and prim office clerk Chelsea (Geraldine Hakewill) are abducted after a botched carjacking and murder. Escaping, they are hunted across the country by cops and criminals. (Starts Wednesday, M-Net Edge, Channel 102 DStv)THE SHIELDAll seven seasons of this acclaimed virtue-and-vice series about a Los Angeles police precinct where bent cops battle criminal gangs are now streaming. Epic man-cave binge-watching stuff. With Michael Chiklis, Catherine Dent, Walton Goggins. (Netflix)THE LIZZIE BORDEN CHRONICLESSpin-off series following the made-for-TV period thriller, "Lizzie Borden Took an Ax". Much murderous mayhem with Christina Ricci as the sweetly smiling but creepy-eyed woman, now exonerated of killing her parents, who is all chop-chop when it comes to dealing with life's irritations. (Netflix) Andrew Donaldson..