With The Following finished I was starting to be concerned there would be a serial killer gap in the schedules; but I shouldn't have worried Hannibal has turned up on Sky Living.
Set before Red Dragon / Manhunter, Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) is a lecturer comeadvisor who is much closer to Eric McCormack's character in Perception than Edward Norton or William Petersen's screen versions of Will Graham. He is a mass of twitches and neurosis, blessed with that fantastic gift of insight that we only see on telly and in films. Graham can not only pinpoint the killer's motives he can also tell us what he had for breakfast last Thursday, well perhaps not that, but he's damn good. So he comes to the attention of FBI agent Jack Crawford ( a classy Laurence Fishburne ) to help him catch, yep you guessed it, serial killers. So far, so Mentalist, Perception et al. But here comes the reason we are all watching. Crawford and Graham also enlist the help of Dr Hannibal Lecter. The tough role of the good Doctor has gone to Mads Mikkelsen, who made a creepy, unnerving Le Chiffre in Casino Royale and makes an equally creepy, unnerving Hannibal Lecter.
The main plot, of the pilot episode, was frighteningly straight forward. Patrick Jane would have solved it before the opening credits. But it was the interplay of the three main characters that held the show together. We also saw an awful lot of scenes of Dr Lecter preparing and eating food (wouldn't you love to see him on Masterchef ?) he even offers Will a nutritious breakfast of egg and sausage which was very uneasy viewing. I'm wondering, are they now rewriting that whole Universe, Smallville style, will Red Dragon eventually pan out or has it all changed? I suppose we will have to see. Hannibal is promising and hopefully it is not a serial killer of the week show like Criminal Minds but grows into something more dark and interesting like The Following.
Over
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