Hannibal (NBC)

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Hannibal is a new show developed by Bryan Fuller (Star Trek: Voyager, Heroes, Pushing Daisies), based on characters from the novel Red Dragon.

It follows FBI Special Investigator Will Graham, and explores how his relationship with Dr. Hannibal Lector forms and grows. Each episode sees a new murder, with the psychological aftermath of the first murder tying the episodes together.

Hannibal stars Hugh Dancy as Will Graham, Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal, and Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford, Will Graham's boss at the FBI. All three actors are fantastic in their respective roles. Mikkelsen in particular manages to take the role of Hannibal out of the Anthony Hopkin's shadow and makes it his own.

The quality of television shows over the past few years has been improving dramatically, with many starting to match and even surpass film. Hannibal is no exception, and has some of the highest production values I've seen on television in a long time.

I have to warn that this is not a show for everyone. The subject matter is gruesome, and the entire show has a deeply sinister feel to it that never lets you get comfortable. I generally have a high tolerance, but Hannibal leaves even me unsettled.

Hannibal airs on NBC on Thursdays in America, and starts tonight on Sky Living in the UK.
 
I am really looking forward to this. Mads Mikkelson is a superb actor and it will be interesting how pretty boy Hugh Dancy takes on the role of Will Graham. I thought William Peterson in the movie Manhunter played the part perfectly. Hope the show is good.
 
The name of this series caused me great confusion when I saw it being trailed on Sky TV for last night's launch..."Hannibal" comes up on screen, and so, says I, 'that looks interesting but I wonder how they will do the scenes with the elephants going over the Alps'.

Cue my whole family giving me a 'WTF' look, and asking what I'm talking about, since the programme is about Hannibal Lecter...when it suddenly dawned on me that the rest of my family didn't immediately think of Hannibal's wars with Rome, and more importantly, HOW CAN THEY NOT KNOW WHO THE REAL HANNIBAL IS?
 
I rather like this show. It's very atmospheric. There is a constant feeling of anticipation and dread. Mads Mikkelsen is superb as Hannibal. He embodies an air of quiet menace, like a predator who could pounce at any moment.
 
I was a bit dubious and, after seeing the first episode, I am still not convinced. This is apparently based loosely around the characters of the first Hannibal book, Red Dragon.

We have the empathic/semi-autistic Will Graham - a character type used in a lot of 'FBI Profiling' procedurals. A slight twist on the usual is that he is a lot more vulnerable because of his ability.

Then we have the Wolf in Sheep Clothing, Hannibal himself, played rather well by Mads Mikkelsen. Just watching him sit and eat breakfast, he looks quietly menacing. I can't help comparing him to Darkly Dreaming Dexter Morgan - the most notable difference being the lack of inner monologue and the appetite for flesh - but in a similar narrative situation.

According to the books/films, Lector was born in Lithuania in 1933. If so, he's looking remarkably good for an octogenarian. So I am guessing, this is very loosely based on the book and film characters.

SPOILER ALERT

In the first episode, Hannibal kills a young woman in the manner of the serial killer of the week, the shrike. Will Graham immediately spots this as a copycat kill, it also helps him realise all the things that he had not seen in the other scenes, as if this copycat kill held up a mirror to show him what he was missing.

1) Did Hannibal do this to bait Will or to help him?
2) In previous lore, Hannibal only seemed to kill those that crossed him or had, themselves, done something significantly heinous - yet here he kills an innocent. I wonder if this was done to make Hannibal's character more distinct from Darkly Dreaming Dexter.
3) Why did he warn the perp? Was it too push Will? What is his motivation?

At the end you see Hannibal camped out by the surviving victims bed. Again, why? Is this part of his charade - or does he genuinely care about her well being, after all, he saved her life?

END OF SPOILERS.
 
Just watched the the first two episodes and was immediately sucked in. Both leads are excellent with Mikkelson in ultra creepy mode. As I watched something was nagging at the back of my mind and then this morning it struck me. Mikkelson and Dancy starred together in the 2004 movie King Arthur...the thoughts that keep you awake at night :)
 
Just watched episode 3. This show is going to go to deep and dark areas where most of us do not want to ever visit. Mikkelson is brilliant as Hannibal.
 
I hope people are still enjoying it ten/four episodes in, because NBC announced yesterday that Hannibal is getting a second series of thirteen episodes, to air mid-season 2014.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/05/hannibal-renewed-by-nbc-for-second-season/

In recent interviews, Bryan Fuller has said that he's got an outline for seven series of stories, and that the show will not always be a murder-of-the-week procedural (particularly so when the characters realise what Hannibal truly is, as the audience already know). Whilst the renewal is good news, there's still some way to go! Hopefully, if it makes it there, Hannibal will handle seven series a lot better than Dexter, it's closest comparison, which saw a massive drop in quality for the third series.

---

Do we have any American viewers? For an American programme that reportedly averages 4.7 million viewers (and is right up the streets of some of our members), there's a distinct lack of opinion from our American members. I know NBC are the devil, and the less you have to do with them the better, but surely someone watches it?
 
I have been watching, and for a whole enjoying this.

Is there any other show that you find yourself being put off food as one of the main characters prepares a sumptuous meal? Worse do you cringe as the dinner guest eat what is before them?

As a whole I think it works, and I'd be happy to see it continue, but on occasion I think it tried to hard to be shocking. The music in particular seems to be done deliberately to shock and put the viewer on edge, but I find it more a cacophonous sound, that detracts from the superb performances, more than capable of putting the viewer on edge.

Lector in his own right could mesmerize every time he is on screen without any dirge telling us we need to be ill at ease.

In fact it occurs to me that no incidental music at all might actually add to the show.

But it's just me, it's not going to stop me watching.
 
I agree that the music is often a bit obvious, but I didn't really notice it that much until episode eight (which, bizarrely, also has one of the best episode soundtracks). That said, I still enjoy the score, and think it's one of the best currently out there.

Anyway, the series finale has just aired in America. I thought it a very good ending to the series, and that it did well to address all of the threads that have been running through the episodes.

I can't wait to go back and marathon the whole series in a couple of sittings, particularly now I also know how things unfold - I reckon there are things hiding, waiting to be found.
 
I just finished watching the series. I had the final 5 episodes recorded and watched them back to back. Bloody awesome viewing is the technical term to describe the viewing experiance as I watched Will descend into madness only to come round again as he realised what a monster Hannibal was. That very final scene is absolutely brilliant. Role on S2.
 
Verse said:
I was a bit dubious and, after seeing the first episode, I am still not convinced. This is apparently based loosely around the characters of the first Hannibal book, Red Dragon.

We have the empathic/semi-autistic Will Graham - a character type used in a lot of 'FBI Profiling' procedurals. A slight twist on the usual is that he is a lot more vulnerable because of his ability.

Then we have the Wolf in Sheep Clothing, Hannibal himself, played rather well by Mads Mikkelsen. Just watching him sit and eat breakfast, he looks quietly menacing. I can't help comparing him to Darkly Dreaming Dexter Morgan - the most notable difference being the lack of inner monologue and the appetite for flesh - but in a similar narrative situation.

According to the books/films, Lector was born in Lithuania in 1933. If so, he's looking remarkably good for an octogenarian. So I am guessing, this is very loosely based on the book and film characters.

SPOILER ALERT

In the first episode, Hannibal kills a young woman in the manner of the serial killer of the week, the shrike. Will Graham immediately spots this as a copycat kill, it also helps him realise all the things that he had not seen in the other scenes, as if this copycat kill held up a mirror to show him what he was missing.

1) Did Hannibal do this to bait Will or to help him?
2) In previous lore, Hannibal only seemed to kill those that crossed him or had, themselves, done something significantly heinous - yet here he kills an innocent. I wonder if this was done to make Hannibal's character more distinct from Darkly Dreaming Dexter.
3) Why did he warn the perp? Was it too push Will? What is his motivation?

At the end you see Hannibal camped out by the surviving victims bed. Again, why? Is this part of his charade - or does he genuinely care about her well being, after all, he saved her life?

END OF SPOILERS.
Click to expand...

Eh, no, point 2 is wrong.

Its true that in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising he seems to target "bad" people, but originally, in both Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, he is much more ruthless than that. Books more than films perhaps, but both book and film have him escape by murdering (brutally murdering) two police officers, then the two guys in the ambulance, and then an off-hand reference to having killed a tourist (probably for cash / clothes etc.). In Red Dragon his sole contribution to the story is telling a maniac who slaughters entire families where Will Graham and his new family live. In Silence the book he pretty much flat-out tells Clarice that she shouldn't think of him as anything other than pure evil (or at least, he rejects the idea that he is a serial killer because of some terrible childhood experience or anything like that; one of the reasons the last two are generally disliked is that they gave him just that).

Also, he didn't target people because they had crossed him or had done something bad- he went after people he found annoying. One of his last victims was the flutist for the local orchestra, who was a patient of his; he killed him either because he was tired of his "whining" in therapy, and / or because Lecter thought the orchestra would sound better without him. And the explicit reason he eats people is to show his utter disdain for them.

Basically, this show is trying to make Lecter more like he was always supposed to be.
 
I saw this series for sale on DVD at the weekend and then remembered this thread.

Coming to this as a fan of both novels Red Dragon and Silence, but one who thought Hannibal the novel was atrocious, I never expected to read or watch anything with the good doctor again. However, words of praise here persuaded me to buy and try....

I have to say that, after watching 3 episodes, I'm enjoying it. I'm not sure if this can sustain itself over multiple series but that's for the future.

So far, it appears money well spent:)
 
Guess what's back!

** BE YE WARNED! FROM HERE ON, SPOILERS FOR SERIES TWO **​

















So, series two jumped out at us last night.

Will Graham is in prison as a serial killer (in a cell, on a block, that brings to mind Hopkins' home in Silence of the Lambs), with five murders to his name, and all the evidence apparently showing he did it. Of course, we know different, and Will himself is determined to show that Hannibal is guilty, even at the cost of not proving his own innocence.

Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom (because it's impossible to refer to these characters with only their first names) question Will Graham's guilt, but aren't convinced that Hannibal (hey, someone you can refer to with a single name!) is the killer. Hannibal, meanwhile, has assumed Will Graham's spot as Crazy Murderer Empathy Guy and has begun consulting for the FBI in weird murder cases.

As we came to expect from the first series, the quality of the first episode of the second series is high, with good acting, great filming, and fairly tense music.

Not everything is the same, though. You have to applaud the writers for not going down the same path, as this series looks to be more about Will Graham in prison trying to make everyone else see that Hannibal is the murderer, rather than Will Graham going mind-to-head with a serial killer (well, actually, when you put it that way...).

I'm glad Hannibal is back. I'm excited to see how this set of episodes pans out!
 
I haven't got around to watching S2 yet but l really enjoyec S1. I enjoyed Eddie Izzards character, and the build up to the large dinner party was fun, with Hannibal saying he was going through his recipe book while flicking through his collection of business cards. All in all more in keeping with the first two books rather than the films. It will be interesting to see if they take the series through the events of Red Dragon and Silence, though as we saw Clarice was not the first trainee agent Crawford sent out into the field.
 
Hurrah! NBC are giving Hannibal a third series!

'Hannibal' Renewed By NBC For Season 3

It may have low ratings, but it's critically acclaimed, has the youngest median viewer age for 10pm dramas, good DVR numbers, and, possibly most importantly, a very low licensing fee, which is set to become even lower.

Maybe we will see all seven series of Bryan Fuller's vision after all? :p
 
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