2) Hannibal
“It’s not like any other series on TV.” An easy epitaph to throw around, but in the case of Hannibal, there really is nothing like it on TV, network, cable or streaming. It’s a crime show, it’s a psychodrama, it’s food porn, it’s horror, it’s funny, it’s ghastly and it’s utterly, utterly unique. Two years ago, if you had said that one of the most addictive series on television was based on a stale movie franchise driven into the rocky shore of cliche and repetition by its own creator, the idea of Hannibal’s awesomeness would have been laughable. But seeing is believing, and in its second season, Hannibal took everything you loved about the show in its first season and turned it up to 11.
Where to begin… How about the way that Bryan Fuller gave us the inverse Red Dragon, with FBI profiler WIll Graham (Hugh Dancy) being locked away in a mental hospital for the criminally insane while Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) gets to enjoy the hero role helping the cops find all the killers. That lasted about half a season till – TWIST! – when Graham tried to ensnare Lecter in a trap by feigning that they can be bros in killing and cannibalizing people. Who didn’t love the relish (pun intended) in Hannibal’s voice in “Kō No Mono” when he said, “Shall we slice the ginger?” subtly hinting to Will’s suggestion that the main course was provided by the hide of tabloid blogger Freddie Lounds.
But cannibal bros. was not meant to be, and the season ended in the only way it could: a blood bath where three of the main characters could be dead and the bad guy makes a clean, European getaway with his morally ambiguous shrink. The meticulously executed final scene is the epitome of just how painstakingly this show is put together week in and week out. While most shows like this one torture themselves in realism, Hannibal is procedural by Tim Burton, a hyperactive world where, for the killer, it’s not enough to kill someone, you have to kill them in a retrofitted prehistoric animal skull, or sew them into the body of dead horse, or section them and place them on human-sized microscope slides.
The world of Hannibal is gruesome, terrifying and bizarre, but there is absolutely nothing like it on television. The mere fact that a broadcast network has shown it for two years and is bringing it back for a third is truly remarkable.
Published: Jan 3, 2015 06:49 pm