4 out of 5

Developed by: Bryan Fuller

Covers season 1

Amazing atmosphere and photography and a surprisingly brooding tone for a major network make ‘Hannibal’ an incredibly compelling view.  With devastating lead performances by Hugh Dancy  – as Will Graham, drafted into the FBI to take advantage of his gifted profiling abilities – and Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal – at this point in the chronology, an esteemed psychiatrist brought in, in part, as a watchdog for the slightly imbalanced Will – the show bristles with feverish menace from scene to scene.  As the series goes on, Hannibal (and the writers) push Will’s grasp on reality further out, so that as viewers we’re continually questioning what we’re seeing.  This plays in tandem with the cat and mouse Hannibal is playing, his crimes smartly unshown (mostly) as he adds kills to muddle the path to or assist the FBI in capturing various serial killers who populate the corpse-heavy world of the series.

However: it’s a difficult in.

Episode 1 introduces a technique that troublingly warns that the show might be headed into procedural CSI territory – Will steps into a scene, closes his eyes, and flashes back over events as he imagines them.  This does pay off further into the season when he has trouble drawing the line between participating and imagining, but introduced right away and then kicking off the eps that follow, it feels a little silly and out of place for the otherwise cold tone.  This is generally followed up by Jack (Will’s FBI boss – Laurence Fishburne) and his team of crime scientists (including an interestingly, but not at all miscast Scott Thompson) to comment on / deny Will’s beliefs.  It’s an understandable trope to use as a setup, but considering how gracefully slow some later episodes are, it’s odd how easily ‘Hannibal’ seemed to want to jump into a lighter format for its start.  This also goes with frequent displays of Hannibal’s ‘feasts’ early on, where its hinted that he’s preparing elaborate and gorgeous meals for guests that are totes made from humany human bits while Dr. Lecter dribbles some eloquent and probably relevant dialogue.  These moments are shot with an air of dark comedy to them that seem to suddenly switch over to menace at some point in the season.  This would seem purposeful (and it must be difficult to continually find new crazy dishes for the doc to drum up), but it’s a notable tonal shift.  That ‘purpose’ shifts the episodic killer-of-the-week format to the backseat for the over-arcing plot of Will’s potential discovery of Hannibal’s true nature.  All of the elements for the switch are seeded well, but the design of the kills are so fascinating it can’t help but be noticeable and somewhat disappointing when they’re lacking all of a sudden.  There’s also a super odd fight scene with Hannibal in one episode.

So, basically: finding their beat has been tough.  As though the disturbed and dark show that pops up in the last part of the season is what was intended, but the creators were uncertain of getting an audience share if they didn’t pander to some conventions.  And by working with existing and known characters (primarily Lecter) there’s always the decision of how much to shown and/or explain.  Here’s hoping, though, that some conventions aren’t completely removed – tuning in each week to see what new crazed killer is being hunted is, absolutely, part of the appeal.  In that regard, the inclusion of this in the Hannibal world might end up being a frustrating distraction.

And so I loaded this with criticisms to otherwise balance out my feeling on how intense and surprising the show can be.  All of it is so unusual for a big network show – Brian Reitzell’s AWESOME unthematic and creepy score, the lack of super attractive hero characters, and the slow dissipation of that reliable TV trope of over-sciencing kill scenes to make them acceptable.  Not that denying genre/station expectations could carry a show.  Same for acting.  Walking Dead has some great actors and pushes the violence beyond what’s even in most movies nowadays, but as with the comics, the scripts tend to boil down to hokey in-fighting.  ‘Hannibal,’ however, works in so many oddities with its unique character interactions that I was totally uncertain of how who, what, where, when and why would play out week to week, up to the devastatingly clever season closer.

We’ll see.  TV is in a great spot right now, able to surpass the world of film in many regards and even the major networks are getting to play with some truly cutting edge material.