Hannibal is one of my favorite shows on television, and it’s perplexing to me that I haven’t written about it yet. That might be partly because it feels like a hidden pleasure that I only talk about with a couple of friends. The show — which portrays the early exploits of everyone’s favorite serial-killing, cannibalistic psychiatrist before we met him in The Silence of the Lambs — doesn’t have a huge following, so even among those who have written about it and recapped it online still seem to be members of a small club.
Also, I sometimes wonder if those of us who love Hannibal are afraid to admit it because… well, what does that say about us? It’s not the same as having a guilty pleasure. But when friends or acquaintances have asked me which TV shows I watch or for a recommendation, I’ve considered that maybe not everyone will appreciate the grand opera of blood, gore and psychological warfare that this show presents. And honestly, it’s not easy to defend when there are bodies splayed open, skin being torn from bodies or pieces of flesh fed to dogs.
I just imagine the next conversation or e-mail: “Yeah, me and my wife watched Hannibal the other night and… well, she really doesn’t want me to talk to you anymore.” (The husband and wife dynamic can be switched in this scenario, by the way. I’m not trying to say that men will like this show more than women. Actually, I might argue the contrary.)
But really, I shouldn’t care about stuff like this. I love Hannibal. I love that such a show is even on the air — and even more amazingly, it’s on a broadcast network instead of cable. Virtually every moment of each episode is 45 minutes of pushing the boundaries of what is possible on TV. Not just in terms of violence and gore, but also storytelling. This is a slow, deliberately paced series.
I’ve never binged Hannibal, because I watch each episode as it airs on NBC, but I imagine it’s not suited for that kind of watching. It’s not that episodes don’t end in such a way that will compel you to immediately watch the next one, but each show might leave you mentally and emotionally drained, and you may want some time to think about what you’ve just seen.
I suspect that executive producer and showrunner Bryan Fuller doesn’t care whether or not viewers will find his show palatable either. After all, he created this thing and is responsible for what goes on the air each week. But in watching the first episode of season three, “Antipasto”— each show is titled after a particular dish, with each season following a particular cuisine; season one was French, season two Japanese — it’s pretty clear that Fuller isn’t necessarily interested in drawing new viewers.
The story picks up where last season left off. Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) has fled to Europe after FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and agent Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) have figured out that he was the serial killer they’ve been searching for during the past two seasons and attempt to arrest him. (Graham knew Lecter was a murderer and a cannibal, and had to prove it to Crawford.)
We were left with Graham and Crawford suffering possibly fatal wounds at Lecter’s hands, yet this first chapter of season three gives us no idea of who survived. (Trailers tell us that both charcters do, which shouldn’t be a surprise. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be much of a series anymore. Plus, Dancy and Fishburne are listed in the opening credits.) The entire episode follows Lecter and his former psychiatrist, Bedelia du Maurier (Gillian Anderson), traveling through Paris before settling in Florence.
Lecter has assumed the identity of a professor and museum curator — whom he’s killed and dined upon, of course — and is encouraging du Maurier to follow through on her darker impulses, much like he did with Graham during seasons one and two. But Graham betrayed Lecter, an emotional wound that the doctor is still recovering from, so he’s trying to groom a new potential partner, someone who understands him. A former colleague of the professor who met Lecter (under a different alias) at a social function discovers the ruse and confronts him. You can surely imagine how our protagonist responds to blackmail.
There’s virtually no attempt to get the audience up to speed on what happened during the past season or two. Fuller leaves that for the “previously on Hannibal” clip recap before the episode kicks in. At one point, I would have worried about that. I wanted more people to watch Hannibal. I wanted it to draw decent ratings. I didn’t want the series to get canceled. And frankly, Hannibal earns the sort of ratings that gets TV shows pulled off the air.
Yet NBC is willing to keep it on the air because content is needed for the spring and summer schedules. Plus, the network licenses the show from French production company Gaumont International Television, which reduces costs significantly. (The series is also popular internationally.) That gives producers a considerable safety net. Had NBC not renewed Hannibal for a third season, there were reports that cable channels or streaming services like Amazon (which carries repeat episodes) would likely pick up the series.
Without having to worry about making stories and characters more accessible, or following the traditional pace of TV dramas, Fuller and his writers and directors can make exactly the show they want and stick to their vision of a series that looks like “a pretentious art film.” And Hannibal looks gorgeous. Lecter is president of The Finer Things Club, with a deep love of art, music and food. Every episode is lovingly shot to reflect those sophisticated tastes, providing long, lingering images of organs being sumptuously prepared by the murderous gourmand and vastly intelligent people trying to gain a psychological advantage over another.
Those frequent slow-motion, close-up sequences — intended to give us ample time to savor the scenery, to appreciate what is happening to these characters and what they’re trying to do — have become increasingly abstract since season two. As Lecter attempts to indoctrinate proteges into his lifestyle, tapping into impulses humans typically reject and avoid, Fuller and his directors (the season three premiere is helmed by Vincenzo Natali, who’s overseen several episodes) have emulated the dream-like — or nightmare-like — state of mind these people are experiencing on screen.
That doesn’t always make for riveting television. Hannibal can be a challenge to stick with, especially if you’re accustomed to a driving narrative in which the story moves forward with each episode. Yet it can also be a great pleasure to watch the craftsmanship on display, in the images that have been created and the longform story being told.
Hannibal neither looks nor feels like any other show on TV because of this, and the joy in that being allowed to happen each week is apparent, especially in Fuller’s Twitter feed that’s both a fun live-follow during an episode and through the days leading up to the next chapter. I think even he can’t believe he gets to make this show. I often can’t believe we get to watch it. But all of us are eager to see where this series eventually goes, following one of our culture’s most compelling villains.
