Mobsters and gangsters keep 'Fargo' going strong in season 4

Noah Hawley's Fargo, a loosely Coen Brothers-inspired anthology series about the battle between good and evil in America's Midwest has, over three seasons, established itself as one of the smartest, most darkly funny and delightfully eccentric shows in the peak television age.

With a refocusing of setting and a careful concentration on the theme of the pernicious influence of racism on the history of the fabled American Dream, its fourth season manages to be a trenchant observation of the underbelly of the nation's foundational myth.

Set in 1950 in Kansas City, Missouri, it's the story of two rival criminal families. The first is the Fadas, Italian mobsters who are the latest in a long line of immigrants to claim the top spot at the bottom the social pile after defeating their predecessors the Irish, who themselves outwitted a Jewish gangster family to earn their brief reign on the throne.

The threat to their supremacy comes in the form of the black Cannon Family, whose boss, Loy (Chris Rock), has a big expansion plan for a little thing he likes to call a "credit card", for which he needs white economic power to spread across the city, the state and the nation.

As an uneasy alliance is formed, things shift into high stakes gear when Fada patriarch Donatello (Gaetano Bruno) dies and is replaced by his son Josto (Jason Schwartzman), whose plans for the family don't include an alliance with "animals".

Along the way there's also the story of Ethelrida Pearl Smutny (Emyri Crutchfield), the daughter of mixed-race mortician parents and the gleefully twisted Minnesota nurse Oreatta Mayflower (Jessie Buckley), whose paths come increasingly close to the violent power games of the gangs.

It's not always as carefully plotted out as its predecessor, but strong performances and characters, a precise sense of time and place, and a determination to keep its theme of exploitation by those at the bottom looking to get a leg up to get what leftovers American society allows to trickle down, means Fargo's fourth season is timely, original and hugely entertaining. 

• 'Fargo' season 4 is on Showmax.