The strangely savory acquired taste known as “Fargo” returns to FX on Monday night for its second season, with a new story, new cast and new time period but that same just-barely-askew take on the world. Violence, deadpan humor and observational oddity mix on this show in a way that no other current series quite matches — not “Bates Motel,” not “Salem,” not even that other FX curiosity, “American Horror Story.” Who else would set a tale in motion with a slaughter at a Waffle Hut?

“Fargo” is an anthology series, so the new season is free-standing, related to the first (and to the 1996 Coen Brothers movie) primarily by tone, though hard-core fans will enjoy spotting connecting character threads. Season 1 was set in 2006. Season 2 moves to 1979, but it’s always the ’50s in “Fargo” — the bleached-out look; the neighborly yet slightly stiff way that people, even husbands and wives, interact.

We are taken to Luverne, Minn., where 15 minutes into the premiere a triple homicide disrupts the Waffle Hut. (As in the earlier incarnations, Fargo, N.D., is more of a specter than a setting; one of the victims, it turns out, was a judge there.) The killings have a connection to a Fargo crime family, and soon a couple who had nothing to do with any of it find themselves with a body-disposal problem. Because that’s the way things go in “Fargo.”

There’s a reason Season 1 won an Emmy for its casting: A significant part of the show’s allure is the way it puts name actors in roles that require actual acting of a sort the public might not associate with them. The familiar faces in Season 1 included Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman and Colin Hanks. The new season offers even more, with delicious results.