Noah Hawley's show Fargo started out strong with two critically-acclaimed seasons, centering on ordinary people in and around the Minnesota and North Dakota districts caught up in dangerous circumstances. By season 3, the formula had grown a little stale. With the upcoming fourth season, Hawley has shaken things up, taking the show's setting south to Kansas City, Missouri, and the time period to 1950, with comedian Chris Rock in the lead in a dramatic role. In an interview with Collider, Hawley explained why he choose to bring the show back for a fourth season in that particular manner:

"I walk out of [finishing a season] always feeling like, "Well, that's gotta be it, right?" But then, invariably, there'll come a moment where I go, "Oh yeah, we could do that." It always comes as a scenario, like two men in an emergency room, or a woman driving home with a man stuck in the windshield of her car, that makes me go, "Oh, that's interesting." Here, it was this idea of these two crime families who have to trade their youngest sons in order to keep the peace. That seemed really interesting to me, as a way to look at immigration and assimilation and also, how painful is that for these families? Who are these kids gonna grow up to be? What are the sacrifices?"

In Season 4 of Fargo, the main story explores two criminal syndicates, the Cannon family, and the Italian Fadda family, jockeying to control several criminal enterprises, from exploitation and graft to drugs, across the midwest. Chris Rock stars as Loy Cannon, head of the Cannon crime family, who strikes a deal with the Faddas to trade their youngest sons to keep all-out war from breaking out. According to Hawley, the show will continue to explore the same questions about criminality that the previous seasons did:

"In continuing, Fargo is an exploration of crime and that criminal mindset. If you look at Bill [William H.] Macy in the movie, he's a criminal. We don't often think of him as the criminal in the movie but he is, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that he's rejected all accountability. He's gonna get away with the thing that he wants. He's put his needs above everybody else's needs, which ultimately is what a criminal is. So, Loy [Chris Rock] gives his son away as a strategic move. Is he a good guy? Is he not a good guy? It's up to you to decide. You'll be like, "I like him. I'm rooting for him." But there will be moments in the story where you're confronted with, why do you like him? Why are you rooting for him? That goes for [Jason] Schwartzman or any of the criminal characters in it."

Featuring Chris Rock as the new lead, with Jason Schwartzman, Jessie Buckley, Salvatore Esposito, Gaetano Bruno, Ben Whishaw, Andrew Bird, Anji White, E'myri Crutchfield, Timothy Olyphant, and Jack Huston, the fourth season of Fargo premieres Sept. 27 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on FX. This news first appeared at Collider.