UPDATE: Presumably in response to my tongue-in-cheek criticism of the show, NBC have now cancelled Hannibal. This is bullshit. #SaveHannibal
Hannibal is probably my favourite kind of TV show, in that it’s a stupid show for smart people. The list of things that make no sense in the Hannibal universe include: People, hallucinogens, the weather, crime statistics, medicine, psychology, the legal system, mental health facilites, American accents (or Eddie Izzard’s American accent, anyway), tastebuds, tabloid journalism, and light. It consists mainly of tasteful shots of food, human corpses and — this being a show about a cannibal — both. It’s melodramatic, over-acted and fundamentally unconvincing, And that’s exactly why it’s so good.
The cinemtographers and designers on the show apparently have no idea that they’re shooting bad pulp fiction. They’ve spent their entire time on the show working under the assumption that they’re contributing to some kind of arthouse movie where the characters are trapped inside a version of New Jersey where it’s permanently a) winter and b) dusk, and no-one’s suspicious of somebody who permanently wears a waistcoat and has a psychiatrist’s office decorated like that batshit insane version of Dracula with Gary Oldman and Keanu Reeves in, which this show, by the way, is less subtle than.
(Having written that, I have realised that the set design and casting of Hannibal make total sense if you assume that the creators were going to do a 21st century Dracula then got told at the last minute that they actually didn’t have the rights.)
Hannibal is set in a world where the number one cause of death is being eaten by Hannibal (played with worrying verisimilitude by Mads Mikkelsen) and the number two cause of death is being made into a freaky sculpture by some other serial killer or, occasionally, Hannibal. When Hannibal isn’t killing people, he’s making incredibly tasty-looking food (most of which is people), while seducing the camera with his eyes, like a terrifying, Danish, Nigella Lawson. It’s like Masterchef but with more murder and less drama.
But he doesn’t always eat the people he kills: One recurring character in the last season was killed then sliced very thinly and displayed in an abandoned observatory (what?) like something out of Bodyworks. How the hell could that possibly happen? Does Hannibal have access to an industrial freezer, a gigantic laser cutter and loads and loads of time?
I haven’t got round to watching the latest episodes of Hannibal, yet, partly because I’m not convinced that it’s going to be so deliriously insane as the first two series now that everyone knows that Hannibal’s a serial killer. How will we get by without someone saying, ‘Guys, c’mon, I think we can trust Hannibal Lecter‘ in every other episode or, occasionally, scene? Mads Mikkelsen on the run isn’t going to be nearly as much fun as him showing off for the audience while he feeds people to other people. And how is he going to find so many strange, Gothic psychiatrist’s offices, mental institutions and pig-slaughtering facilities (yes, Gothic pig-slaughtering facilities) to hang around in when he’s off jetsetting about with Gillian Anderson? What’s he going to do, stop off at a drive thru and make double-entendres about murder over cheeseburgers and fries?
To be fair, I didn’t really see how the second season could work with Will in a psychiatric ward for most of the time, but that turned out pretty well, with a finale that was totally insane: Hannibal revealing he’d somehow kept a teenager locked up somewhere for ages without anyone noticing, only to kill her, along with apparently most of the regular cast, almost immediately, then whining to Will like a teenager about how they could’ve been best friends if only Will had joined in with all the superfun murder he’d planned for them both. Aw.
Prior to that, someone nearly got Hannibal to hang himself but only by first trussing him up like he was going to be crucified, leading to some truly insane biblical imagery that only seemed to exist in order to be really weird. Hannibal recovered from this ordeal by playing the harpsichord in a threatening manner. Other key moments from season two include the time Hannibal gave someone so much drugs that they agreed to eat their own face.
I am, at some point, going to watch the third season, though not all in one sitting (I did that with the first season and had some very confusing dreams about Mads Mikkelsen and Eggs Benedict). I may follow up this blog with my general impression of whether or not season 3 is shaping up to be as good as the first two. I’m sort of hoping Hannibal goes on some kind of Young Indiana Jones-style globe-hopping adventure where he meets major historical figures (then eats them).
Frank Podmore 