Hannibal

One of the best shows I've ever seen! stellar performances, exceptional writing and top notch production.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I am an enthusiastic admirer of Hannibal Lecter. I enjoyed all Thomas Harris's Lecter books, despite the fact that I normally hate prequels. I also thought Anthony Hopkins's portrayal of Lecter in Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal was excellent and even added to Lecter's character. So I am mystified as to how the TV series Hannibal could garner such universal praise. It bears only the most superficial relation to Harris's iconic character. But first, let's start with the casting. Mikkelsen may be a good actor; he was an adequate Le Chiffre. But the man's physical appearance and speech are distracting, especially his mouth. It's weird. He has an overbite and duck lips. His accent is thick and his delivery lacks feeling. There's nothing compelling about the man's presence, though his face is interesting and rather handsome. But this is in no way Hannibal Lecter. This was a case of bad casting but I suppose it might be overlooked, though not by anyone who appreciates acting. Now lets discuss a more important flaw with this series: the writing. The situations are mostly preposterous. Hannibal's motives are so obsure, even he seems to have no idea what he's doing or why. But the worst thing is Will Graham. He walks into a crime scene and plays it backward in vivid and presumably hyper-accurate detail. Yes, we get to see this, but we have no idea how. With Sherlock Holmes, we get an explanation of his deductive process, of the clues and their meanings. But Will Graham's process is opaque. He sees what he sees as from some supernatural gift. He makes sudden pronouncements that are almost always right, but seem to emanate from some inner sibylline voice rather than from his reconstructive or even intuitive powers. They're passed off as intuitive, but real intuition is fueled by experience and observation. This insistence on giving Graham super powers leads to endless absurdities. He can imagine perfectly how a scene played out based on the placement of furniture and the spray of blood, yet he misses a hundred signs that Hannibal Lecter is a killer. So many, many signs missed. And everything has to be cloaked in layers of ponderous music and entire episodes that add up to nothing. Then there's the relationship between Jack Crawford and Graham. It's so inconsistent and turbulent that one is left with the feeling that Crawford is just messing with Graham's head because he enjoys it. I could go on about this show's flaws, but it would only depress you and me. The most depressing thing being that it was so well-received. I can only attribute this to the nostalgia we all feel for the character. He's a once-beloved uncle whose flaws we could now see if the imago were not so vital to our sense of the world. How easy it is to exploit our old affections and loyalties; how sad it is that so-called creators would desecrate our enthusiasm. They promise us the thing we love, and give us a deformed and diminished substitute. And so many are happy with it. It makes me wonder if those people ever really liked Hannibal Lecter for the right reasons.

Stupid, boring, incoherent, lazy, superficial, uninteresting, annoying and unnatural.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]