Critic Reviews

NBC's best new drama since forever. [15 Apr 2013]

For its authentic engagement with despair, Hannibal earns its wrenching nihilism: It's a great, epic vision of American horror.

Hannibal captures your imagination with the prospect of Graham using his imagination to figure a way out. [28 Feb 2014, p.65]

Hannibal is thematically brilliant and dense in ways that most network television is not, but it wouldn't remotely work without its committed, incredibly talented cast. Dancy and Mikkelson continue to redefine these characters to the point that they're making them their own while Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas, and another great guest turn by Gillian Anderson elevate the overall ensemble.

Hannibal has always been beautiful, and that’s still the case. It’s also always featured dialogue and plots that stay just on the right side of being too pretentious, and that remains the case. If there are any notable steps up from season one, it’s both in the tension that mounts thanks to the great game played between Will and Hannibal and in the better use of the show’s supporting cast.

Its intensity, intelligence and dark power are the equal of anything on cable, with riveting performances led by Mikkelsen as the dapper, sinister fiend-in-plain-sight and Hugh Dancy as his tormented patsy, FBI profiler Will Graham.

You could say it’s as close as a broadcast network has gotten to the personal artistry of the best premium-cable shows, if it weren’t bolder and more elegant than anything on pay cable right now, including HBO’s own serial-killer drama, True Detective.

The show is infernally good. [17 Mar 2014]

Season three of Hannibal wanders off into dark, unexpected territory in Italy, remaining even more incisively and ambitiously written than the last season, and sporting the most radically expressive imagery currently on television.

On every level, Bryan Fuller and the team behind Hannibal are elevating what we should expect from network television.