Chris Rock, Kansas City and the mafia: ‘Fargo’ fourth season will be set in 1950 KC

Chris Rock will play the head of an African-American crime family in 1950 Kansas City in the fourth season of the Emmy-winning FX series, “Fargo,” the network announced Friday.

Kansas City has traveled down a bloody path on this drama series before.

Some critics found the depiction and characterization of Kansas City mobsters in the show’s second season to bear little or no resemblance to historical truth.

Production on season four will begin next year, though the network did not say where it will be filmed, and it is scheduled to run next year, too, Variety reported.

Though “the murderous Midwest anthology show bounced around, wreaking havoc across Minnesota — in Bemidji, Duluth, Luverne, St. Cloud, Eden Valley and more,” in the first three seasons, noted Minnesota Public Radio, the show was filmed in Canada.

This time, MPR wrote, “the chaos will likely unfold far outside the Minnesota borders. Look out, Missouri.”

Rock hasn’t been on TV in a recurring role in more than a decade, according to the Los Angeles Times, and his TV work has been mostly comedic, including a stint as a “Saturday Night Live” cast member in the early ’90s.

He’s worked with FX before, Variety reports, as an executive producer on “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.”

Each season of “Fargo” - which debuted in 2014 and was inspired by the Oscar-winning movie from the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan - features a different cast and time period for the action. The first three seasons were set in 2006, 1979 and 2010, according to the Times.

The fourth season synopsis provided on Friday by FX, published by Rolling Stone and other entertainment outlets, describes the new season as the “story of immigration and assimilation, and the things we do for money.”

The year 1950 in Kansas City marks the “end of two great American migrations — that of Southern Europeans from countries like Italy, who came to the US at the turn of the last century and settled in northern cities like New York, Chicago — and African Americans who left the south in great numbers to escape Jim Crow and moved to those same cities — you saw a collision of outsiders, all fighting for a piece of the American dream,” the synopsis says.

“In Kansas City, Missouri, two criminal syndicates have struck an uneasy peace. One Italian, one African American. Together they control an alternate economy — that of exploitation, graft and drugs. This too is the history of America. To cement their peace, the heads of both families have traded their eldest sons.”

When the head of the Kansas City mafia dies during a routine surgery, the peace ends, the synopsis says.

During the show’s second season, set in 1979, freelance film critic Steve Walker in Kansas City concluded that a show that claimed to be “a true story” really wasn’t when it came to depicting Kansas City mafia.

The season began with two “supposed” members of the Kansas City mafia “arriving in Fargo to ‘acquire territory,’” in North Dakota and Minnesota, Walker wrote in a review for KCUR public radio.

He faulted the show for moving too quickly into the “bloodbath” because “crime bosses have testified for years that violence is a last resort if diplomacy fails.”

Walker declared the season to be “like Shakespeare in the snow, and so far Kansas City is losing face.”

Noah Hawley, who created the FX series, will direct and write the upcoming fourth season, according to Variety.

“I’m a fan of Fargo and I can’t wait to work with Noah,” Rock said in a statement published by entertainment outlets.

Maxim points out the potential for an Emmy nod for Rock, depending obviously on his performance. Kirsten Dunst, Billy Bob Thornton, Ewan McGregor and others from the first three seasons have all been nominated, according to Maxim.