It was a gory, three-course meal with complicated start and a ravishing finish.
My favorite television show of all time is Hannibal, the surprising NBC adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon. The show focused on FBI Special Investigator Will Graham and his relationship to Psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a relationship that the internet would lovingly dub “murder husbands.”
As someone who enjoyed Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs, found an amusing appreciation for Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, and found himself bored by Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon, I was interested to see how NBC (of all channels) was going to take a stab at the polite cannibal.
You can see the trailer below in all its gory glory:
The first thing I did when I saw the trailer was look up who was spearheading this ambitious adaptation.
My reaction:
The show wasn’t without its faults, and I’m sure a bunch of wrong people have already gone and written about that sort of thing. Me? I died and found myself in television heaven. The acting was top notch, with Mads Mikkelsen bringing a menace on par (and in my opinion surpassing) Hopkin’s take from Silence.
Hugh Dancy was no slouch either and kept the character of Will Graham from being a two-dimensional sack of mope-lasses. The camera work was phenomenal – bested only by the exquisite, baroque soundtrack – and every moment of every episode was impolitely slathered with style.
Great. It’s time for another re-watch. See you all at the dinner table!
Writer/Creator/Web Guy for After the Hype. Created an animated fantasy webseries called Flagon. GM for Demon Dayz: An Actual Play Podcast, which you can conveniently find here on athpod.com