Love ‘Fargo’? Then ‘Arthur’s Law’ Needs to Be Your Next Binge

If there’s one thing TV has perfected it’s the thrill of normal people committing murder. The best entry into this highly specific genre has long been Fargo, a show that routinely sweeps everyday Joes and Janes into sagas filled with gang wars, sociopathic angels of death, police violence, and occasionally aliens. It’s going to be a while if we get another installment of Fargo. But Arthur’s Law is here now to give you that sweet fix of incompetent dummies committing the worst crimes imaginable and praying they’ll get away with them.

The German Arthur’s Law shares the most similarities with Fargo‘s first season. The dramedy centers around the deeply unlucky Arthur Ahnepol (Jan Josef Liefers). When we first meet Arthur — on his birthday, no less — everything about Arthur’s life is sad. He has a wife named Martha (Martina Gedeck) who at best doesn’t respect him and at worst actively hates him. He doesn’t have a job thanks to said wife and her insistence he saw off his hand to collect insurance money. He doesn’t even seem to have any close friends. He’s a man walking through life who is desperate to make real human connections but who is entirely incapable of doing so.

This doesn’t merely translate to Arthur’s home life. Every detail about his existence seems designed to either be forgotten or to repulse. Bartenders ignore him when their restaurant is empty. When he first walks into the welfare office in search of a job, the lady in charge implies that he’s rude before even making eye contact. That’s said while she’s on the phone describing her birthing class in graphic detail, by the way. Arthur is a living ghost. At least that’s the case until he meets a sweet prostitute named Jesse (Cristina do Rego).

It’s the kindness she shows this deeply sad man that triggers everything else. After underpaying Jesse, her pimp arrives at his house, both alerting Martha to his infidelity and demanding money he doesn’t have. During their fight, Martha with little help from her husband manages to take the upper hand and kill the pimp before he kills them. The rest of the series takes off in a direction you may expect. Arthur and Martha have to dispose of a body and pretend they didn’t kill a man all while hiding from the cops and every gang member who wants revenge for their fallen brother.

Yet it’s the central emotions and frankly weird flourishes of Arthur’s Law that elevate it from just another crime drama. Arthur and Martha’s crime didn’t come about because of anger, fear, negligence, or any of a hundred states of mind you’d associate with killing another person. It happens because of loneliness. Arthur’s profound sense of loneliness and desperation to be close to literally any other human underlies every one of his decisions, even his choice to hide a body. There are echoes of Martin Freeman’s Lester Nygaard in this all-powerful portrayal, a smiling man who’s so consumed with his own deep-seated and under-addressed insufficiency that it manifests as death and chaos around him.

And then there are the details. It’s always been the bizarre that’s made Fargo resonate, and Arthur’s Law courts a similar odd ethos. For example, Arthur is rarely seen without his prothetic hand, a bulky appendage that always looks chronically too large for his frame. There’s also the fact that Arthur and Martha don’t kill this pimp with a gun or strangulation or anything remotely normal. No, instead Arthur shoots a ton of expanding foam into the man’s mouth, which quickly does its job and blocks every one of his orifices. Watching a man suffocate while foam pools out of his nostrils and ears is sickening to watch, but it’s also a sight you can’t look away from.

The perverse joy that comes from watching normal people struggle with murder lies in the what if. What if I was in their situation? What if I was the one who pulled the trigger on the expanding foam? What if my wife asked me to cut off my hand for insurance? Arthur’s Law understands that and delivers situation after situations that will leave you gaping, at the screen, at these aggressively toxic characters, and at yourself.

Watch Arthur's Law on HBO NOW and HBO Max