Hoping for a Season 2 of Fargo

Much credit due to Noah Hawley, who wrote the entire Fargo TV series, each episode of which was smart and entertaining, just on the edge of believable without ever becoming mundane and procedural, and just over the edge without ever becoming preposterous and absurd. Unlike in so many other series, the plot felt well designed and well paced, not pulled together episode by episode from among the loose strands and broken pieces. (Possible spoilers about the end to follow.) I guess the final "message" is that crime doesn't pay and that honesty is the best policy - though of course the criminal minds at work and the gradual descent of Martin Freeman/Lester Nygaard into brutality and evil is the most engaging aspect of the series. Freeman is great and so is Billy Bob Thornton as Loren Malvo, the sadistic gun for hire who brings about his own undoing by taking on a case just for the hell of it - he should have walked away, as he advises Lester to do toward the end of the series. Hard to imagine that there won't be a Season 2, as the excellent and well-cast Allison Tollman (Molly) and Colin Hanks (Gus) have survived and it seems that they should continue, if Hawley has some other ideas for them. This unusual series - like the movie original - manages to be both brutally violent and sweetly sentimental, without ever being snide, snarky, or condescending toward its characters. Each episode began with a statement that this series was based on events that took place in Minnesota in 2006 and that only the names have been changed - preposterous on its face, but I do seem to remember there was a murder-for-hire case that went awry and I wonder what the factual basis behind the script might be; I'll have to look that up.