Despite sharing the name of one of the films and books, Hannibal takes place before the events of those series, giving us a glimpse into the day to day life of television's most beloved psychopathic serial killer. "The only thing for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing", said someone who might have been Edmund Burke. In the case of Hannibal, evil triumphs when good men can't notice the flipping obvious.
Hannibal Lecter devotes all his time to hosting elaborate meals and not curing his psychiatric patients. I can't help but wonder how he manages to keep in business, between him gaslighting and murdering all his patients, and the massive overheads that come with a lifestyle lavish enough to make Frasier Crane blush. I also can't help wonder why it is taking so long for people to notice there is something off with Hannibal. He's surrounded by presumably smart people, and yet none of them find him in the slightest bit odd, despite him being played by the terrifying Mads Mikkelsen and talking entirely in weird innuendos. Compare this to the movie The Hunt, where everyone is convinced Mads Mikkelsen's character is a serial paedophile on looks alone.
Hannibal is a police procedural, wrapped up in some psychoanalytical gibberish. Each episode, a serial killer murders someone in an impressively creative way, and it's up to a severely mentally unstable FBI profiler, Will Graham, and the bullying chief inspector Crawford, to figure it out. Profiling isn't a very robust method of police work on its own, but in this show everyone treats Graham like he is the key to solving every murder. Somehow, Graham does work it out correctly every time though, his various mental health problems giving him an uncanny ability to figure out the thought processes of serial killers. His efforts are however undermined when the evidence inevitably points in the direction of those same culprits, meaning that in many of the cases they'd find the murderer without forcing the suffering Graham to stare at yet another stack of festering corpses. The FBI does not seem like a healthy place to work.
I like a lot of things about Hannibal. I like the pretty food, and the spooky atmosphere, and the imaginative camera work used to demonstrate the delusional state that many of its characters live in. I like less the relationships between the characters; everyone is an arsehole to everyone else, except Graham who we know is nice because he keeps lots of dogs. I also dislike the fetishisation of mental health. We are shown a range of super rare disorders, dialled up to 11 to make them as horror show worthy as possible. Then there is Lecter's air of supernatural genius that lets him outmanoeuvre everyone, when really it is blind luck he keeps getting away with it. It would only take a detective to realise that CCTV is a thing for Lecter to be caught out. It's a decent show, but not as smart as it pretends to be, and a lot more clumsy.
A Searing Indictment of the FBI
Despite sharing the name of one of the films and books, Hannibal takes place before the events of those series, giving us a glimpse into the day to day life of television's most beloved psychopathic serial killer. "The only thing for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing", said someone who might have been Edmund Burke. In the case of Hannibal, evil triumphs when good men can't notice the flipping obvious.
Hannibal Lecter devotes all his time to hosting elaborate meals and not curing his psychiatric patients. I can't help but wonder how he manages to keep in business, between him gaslighting and murdering all his patients, and the massive overheads that come with a lifestyle lavish enough to make Frasier Crane blush. I also can't help wonder why it is taking so long for people to notice there is something off with Hannibal. He's surrounded by presumably smart people, and yet none of them find him in the slightest bit odd, despite him being played by the terrifying Mads Mikkelsen and talking entirely in weird innuendos. Compare this to the movie The Hunt, where everyone is convinced Mads Mikkelsen's character is a serial paedophile on looks alone.
Hannibal is a police procedural, wrapped up in some psychoanalytical gibberish. Each episode, a serial killer murders someone in an impressively creative way, and it's up to a severely mentally unstable FBI profiler, Will Graham, and the bullying chief inspector Crawford, to figure it out. Profiling isn't a very robust method of police work on its own, but in this show everyone treats Graham like he is the key to solving every murder. Somehow, Graham does work it out correctly every time though, his various mental health problems giving him an uncanny ability to figure out the thought processes of serial killers. His efforts are however undermined when the evidence inevitably points in the direction of those same culprits, meaning that in many of the cases they'd find the murderer without forcing the suffering Graham to stare at yet another stack of festering corpses. The FBI does not seem like a healthy place to work.
I like a lot of things about Hannibal. I like the pretty food, and the spooky atmosphere, and the imaginative camera work used to demonstrate the delusional state that many of its characters live in. I like less the relationships between the characters; everyone is an arsehole to everyone else, except Graham who we know is nice because he keeps lots of dogs. I also dislike the fetishisation of mental health. We are shown a range of super rare disorders, dialled up to 11 to make them as horror show worthy as possible. Then there is Lecter's air of supernatural genius that lets him outmanoeuvre everyone, when really it is blind luck he keeps getting away with it. It would only take a detective to realise that CCTV is a thing for Lecter to be caught out. It's a decent show, but not as smart as it pretends to be, and a lot more clumsy.