I wouldn't even acknowledge the existence of television until 1990's "Twin Peaks." After that, I fell in love with Joss Wedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in the late 90's and then pretty much forgot TV existed again. With streaming now making it easier to see things at our own convenience, I reluctantly began to search out the critically acclaimed or just plain weird. Sure, give tons of credit to "Breaking Bad" and "Game of Thrones" but I only saw these shows way after the talk had faded and I could watch these programs in peace without fear of spoilers everywhere I turned. But in my mind, the real modern instant classics of the 2010's were the BBC's "Sherlock" and the show we're going to talk about today: NBC's "Hannibal." Here's some of the reasons why I continue to ponder and adore this adaptation:
* It changes Thomas Harris' stories just enough to keep things unpredictable and interesting. For instance, the final scene of the first season is an extremely clever reversal of the first introduction of Lecter in prison in "Silence of the Lambs." The show changes some of the characters' genders from male to female. Things happen in the show in a much different order than the books. No matter if you've read all the books and seen all the films, the story of Will and Hannibal is rejiggered just enough to feel fresh and modern.
* The second season begins with a brutal hand-to-hand fight between two of the main characters 12 weeks in the future and ends with a finale that is the most harrowing bloodbath I've ever seen on a network show. Seriously, we're shown things that I've never seen done in a continuing television show before. There are cliffhangers and then there's this and the almost year-long wait to see how this resolved itself was excruciating. But now that all three seasons are streaming on Amazon Prime, you new viewers don't have to suffer that.
* The imagery in the show is disturbing while also being beautifully filmed; never have you seen such violence and violations of the human form rendered in such picture-perfect detail. Will starts out haunted and stalked by this imaginary stag, a large antlered mythical beast that by the second season has transformed into the pitch black form of an antlered man. That image is, of course, Hannibal but distorted into something grotesque but beautiful.
* It has a wicked sense of humor. The dialogue is a rapid fire give and take of setups and then the blackest punchlines. Its punishment of the Dr. Chilton character is a running gag that gets more delicious the crueler it becomes. Actor Raúl Esparza is perfect as the greedy and opportunistic Chilton and the terrible situations this show keeps putting him in lets us know that the writers are in on the black humor of the show every step of the way. It doesn't hurt that Esparza is so good at playing such a cad (and Hannibal never had much tolerance for the rude or crude).
* The show is a foodies dream come true, showing exquisite preparation of the most exotic dishes, all lovingly photographed with a finer sheen than I've ever seen on the food network.
* It's a love story in the grandest, most tragic sense. On par with how Buffy and Angel could never overcome their differences and true natures, such is the relationship between Hannibal and Will Graham. While both have a connection to the darkside that few other humans can even imagine, Will will always fight on the side of angels while Hannibal is, of course, pure evil. At one point, Will explains their major difference so succinctly: "You revel in the darkness while I merely tolerate it." Despite the monster that Hannibal is, his actual feelings for Will never seem anything less than valid and genuine and it's this pursued friendship by Hannibal of Will that remains poignant and affecting throughout the entire show.
* And yet despite how terrible Hannibal is, he is also a master actor, a "highly functioning sociopath," to steal a quote from one of my other favorite shows from the mid 2010's about an unlikable antihero, the BBC's "Sherlock." Hannibal is nobodies best friend although he can simulate one perfectly. Early in the first season when he rushes in to save the victim of a throat slashing, you can almost see how wonderful this character could be if he wasn't so broken. In the second season, he's given the chance to save a beloved character who is overdosing right in front of him. He pauses a second, flips a coin, looks at the results and then brings them back from the brink.
* The entire cast is to die for. I almost can't describe how good Mads Mikkelsen is in the title role except to make a comparison with a performance that I still hold sacred. Mikkelsen taking over the role from Anthony Hopkins and making it his own is the exact level of quality that Heath Ledger did the same with the Joker character in Nolan's Batman films. Instantly, we forget that anyone else ever even tried to play this character and it's one that will stand the test of time, I'm sure.
Hugh Dancy as Will Graham is nearly as good but he receives a little less credit here just because I think it might be easier playing a good guy. And Will is good through and Through. Reveiled early on to be a dog-lover, Will can't resist taking home every stray he finds. And despite his talent for getting into the minds of killers ("He has pure empathy"), he remains as vulnerable as a child. There's never a moment where you don't feel for this character and just want to be his friend, to give him a hug as he puts himself in more and more danger bringing the baddies to justice.
Laurence Fishburne brings a bedrocks heft to the role of Jack Crawford and "Firefly's" fantastic Gina Torres plays his wife, who's thankfully given more to do than most TV characters' wives. As fellow FBI agents, Hettienne Park is Beverly Katz, a Graham coworker who stands by Will when others won't. Scott Thompson and Aaron Abrams are Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller, two agents on the forensic team who have to have a background in comedy considering how funny they both are here. And for Hannibal Lecter's own psychiatrist, they brought in a heavy hitter who had the background and reputation and gravitas to play someone who we'd actually believe the devil himself would look up to: Gillian Anderson. After all her years on "The X-Files," we can believe her to now be an esteemed professional in the psychiatric field.
Despite my esteem for this show, the first season isn't perfect but all of those early-footing faults can I'm sure be traced back to the network that bankrolled this bold and risky effort. The format it starts out with, a buddy cop procedural chasing down new weirdo serial killers every week is so traditional, I actually dismissed this show after watching most of the first season. The fact that it actually recovered and got interesting by those last first episodes indicate that the money guys seemed to let series creator Bryan Fuller off the creative leash and came to trust him more as the show went on. The show settles into the extraordinary at the start of the second season and never lets up and as a whole, its the work of a supremely confidant and talented artist. The fact that we actually got 3 seasons of this defies belief.
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