The story of investigator Will Graham's interaction with his antagonist Hannibal Lecter and the cases they investigated.
A superb series that incorporates the elements of the stories from Red Dragon, Hannibal and Hannibal Rising (the producers couldn't get the rights to Silence Of The Lambs), mixes them, stylizes them and uses a good amount of poetic license in their reinterpretation and produces an unexpected result, at a great distance from the original films in terms of style, effect, depth, the ambiguity of the delimitation between good and evil. Without overshadowing the original films, most of the effect of the Hannibal series comes from the impression of the unreal, with an almost annoying emphasis on style and hallucinatory and impressive visual effects, used especially to intensify moments of revelation, hallucinations, symbolism or many moments when food is cooked, a ordinary act in everyday life, but raised to an art form here.
The ambiguity of the characters becomes more and more accentuated as the seemingly "good" ones are subjected more and more to Lecter's influence, who is not initially revealed as what we all know him as. Thus Will Graham, who would initially seem to be Clarice Starling's counterpart from Silence Of The Lambs, follows an unusual and full of surprises character developmental path, contrasting wonderfully with Clarice's character (who does not exist in the universe of the series).
Obviously, many of these impressions can only be effected on the audience that's familiar with the aforementioned films, which does not mean that Hannibal cannot be a delight even for the uninitiated. Far from it, the series is possibly even more effective as an introduction to the new audience of the fascinating man that is Hannibal Lecter, a man full of contradictions and unexpected intentions and unnatural tendencies.
Production: NBC
With: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Laurence Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas, Gillian Anderson, Katharine Isabelle, Eddie Izzard, Richard Armitage, Gina Torres, Joe Anderson, Michael Pitt, Cynthia Nixon, Tao Okamoto, Anna Chlumsky, Jeremy Davies, Zachary Quinto
Rating: 9/10
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