He's Eating Them

      One of my favorite tv shows airing right now is, hands down, NBC’s Hannibal. As a prequel to the “Hannibal Lecter Trilogy” stories, it follows Will Graham, a former homicide cop turned lecturer  with an empathy disorder as he is roped into using his skills as a profiler for the FBI.  He is extraordinarily fragile, and he is informally assigned to food porn specialist/plaid suit wearer/psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter to monitor his mental well-being as he works the field. 

     This show has everything: Scandinavian horror folklore, paisley ties, dogs out the yang, elegant cannibalism.  It’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea- the first season struggled with ratings, and I have a feeling the current second season is probably doing much the same. I get why- it’s  not an easy show to watch. It’s gory, twisted and psychologically unsettling. I mean, the guy eats people. In everything. Everything is people.  

     But it’s also one of the most visually stunning shows on tv right now, especially on network tv. The cinematography is film industry standard quality.  Insanely graphic scenes of corpses speared on deer antlers are so beautiful, you can’t look away. 

 

The story telling is stunning as well, borrowing lines directly from and staying fairly true to its source material, the novels by Thomas Harris.  (Apparently Bryan Fuller, the show’s producer has seven seasons mapped out leading up to and overtaking “Red Dragon”, the first of the Hannibal Lecter series, focusing on Hannibal’s main character Will Graham life after tangling with Doctor Lecter. ) Mads Mikkelsen is sublime as Hannibal. That’s not a word I’m going to throw around pretty much ever again, but that’s the only word I can think of to describe what he brings to the table. The character of Hannibal Lecter is fascinating to begin with; a psychopathic cannibal with a taste for the finer things, he is insanely likeable. He loves beautiful suits, listens to beautiful music, has a beautiful office, makes deliciously beautiful food… er out of people.  It’s very easy to forget he’s the villain here. He's highly intelligent, manipulating those around him to frame fuzzy lost kitten Will Graham for horrendous murders he commits, all while feeding his victims to the highest level FBI agents and making cannibal puns left and right.

While singing Mads’ praises, I have to also give equal attention to Hugh Dancy as Will Graham. You may want to go to the Parisian opera with Hannibal, but you also want to wrap Will in a dog-print Snuggie and feed him hot non-person soup. 

Everyone in the cast is fantastic. I really love that Bryan Fuller has done some gender-swapping of the characters, specifically with  Freddie Lounds and Alana (originally Alan) Bloom. It’d be a very male-heavy cast if he stuck to the source material, and the addition of these female characters really works in the context of the story. 

All in all, I’m really hoping that it’s ratings pick up this season around and it continues through all seven seasons that are planned!

 



All images in this post are from here