3) Hannibal
“Mizumono”: say it to someone fluent in Japanese, and they might get a hankering for something sweet. Say it to a Hannibal fan, and don’t be surprised if the response is a more volatile mix of revulsion, despair and frenzied enthusiasm. Even removed from its jaw-dropping final episode, the second season put to rest any doubts that Hannibal wasn’t just sublime TV psychological horror, but also as full stop great as it is baroquely disturbing.
That Hannibal could also lay claim to 2014’s single most memorable and gut-wrenching hour of programming in “Mizumono” meant that if this was to be the end of the low-rated series, it would have been one as audacious and shocking as the rest of the show had often been.
Thankfully, we haven’t seen the last of Dr. Lecter, though creator Bryan Fuller and company have their work cut out for them if they want to follow a sophomore season that made the first seem like a mere appetizer. The hazy dream logic guiding the show’s worldview didn’t always fully jibe with the tight cat-and-mouse game Lecter was playing with Will Graham and the FBI, but did help tighten Hannibal’s stranglehold on the title of Best Looking Show on Television. The peerless visual design alone would warrant its inclusion on this list, but that each dreadfully delicious frame of the show was packed with performances, writing and thematic density almost as rich was icing on the cake.
