'Fargo' Producer Warren Littlefield Teases Second-Season Details

Prepare for the FX anthology series to go back to 1979 and Ronald Reagan as the Kansas City mob moves in on the Gerhard crime family in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

The Kansas City mob is coming to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Fargo producer Warren Littlefield, attending the Banff World Media Festival, teased the upcoming second season of Noah Hawley's anthology series for FX and MGM as it goes back to 1979 and a post-Vietnam America.

"The second season is really is about the corporatization of America. It's the difference between a mom-and-pop family business and a Walmart," Littlefield told The Hollywood Reporter after delivering a master class.

Fargo will critique corporate America with a "true crime" storyline over 10 new episodes. "It's the Kansas City mob basically looking to do a hostile takeover of the Gerhard crime family. In the middle, we have a couple, Ed and Peggy Blomquist, and they get caught in the middle of a war between these two crime factions," Littlefield said.

As Fargo goes back to 1979, the second season will include Ronald Reagan starting out on the presidential campaign trail. "America is seeking a healing time," Littlefield said.

The sophomore season will see Patrick Wilson play Lou Solverson, a clean-cut Minnesota State Patrolman, four years back from Vietnam, while Ted Danson will play the role of Hank Larsson, a Second World War veteran and sheriff of Rock County, Minnesota.

Littlefileld also touted his new cable model with FX's Fargo anthology series, which gives the former NBC president creative control and innovation rarely known during his U.S. network tenure. "With Fargo, it's strong content. We don't do melodrama. We don't build at the end of an episode. We have never shown the network a script with an ad break in it. We figure it out in the edit suite," Littlefield explained during his master class.

Fargo also delivers a new stand-alone season only when the producers, FX and MGM deem the time is right for a return, not necessarily every fall as with network series. "We don't go back to any sets. We don't go back to actors. We just start fresh" with each new season, Littlefield said. The irony is he didn't see the value of the cable model during his Must See NBC years.

"Cable lived off of network re-runs. They didn't want to spend money the way we were spending money," Littlefield said. Now he sees the value of the smaller-budget, niche dramas and comedies that John Landgraf's FX has allowed with Fargo, and other premium cable channels have done to usher in the golden age of TV.

"If you have a breakthrough show on a network, that's an attractive financial model. But on Fargo, we said this works for us," Littlefield insisted.