Article first posted as HANNIBAL Series Premiere Review on Seat42F.
Grade: 85%
Grade: 85%
NBC jumps on the serial killer bandwagon
with its new drama series, HANNIBAL. The first episode, premiering
tonight at 10 p.m., is called “Apetrif,” which, for those not familiar
with the term, is an alcoholic drink served before a meal, sort of the
liquid version of an appetizer. It’s appropriate in a series about
cannibalism that we’ll get to see a little bit of the characters and
story before the gory stuff starts. And there is gory stuff, even though
this is a basic broadcast network, in the first hour.
HANNIBAL, surprisingly, is not about the
infamous killer from Silence of the Lambs. He’s there, and we’ll get to
him in a minute, but the main character is Special Agent Will Graham
(Hugh Dancy, The Big C), a brilliant but unstable investigator and
professor. Will is tasked by the FBI with figuring out who commits
murders, and he’s brilliant at it, being able to envision himself at the
scene at the time of the crime.
Bryan Fuller, creator of Pushing Daisies
and Wonderfalls, has a lot of fun with Will’s character. Fuller doesn’t
take things into the cartoonish or fantasy world settings here, like he
done in his previous shows. Instead, he focuses on the artistry, with
Will’s visions beautifully illustrated in creative and intriguing ways.
Bodies will float and blood will spatter, but this definitely has a
darker tone, more grounded in reality, than his other work.
Will gets to have such vibrant musings
because he’s mentally unstable, sort of like the main character in TNT’s
Perception. The reason the FBI can’t use him full-time is because he
can’t handle the full-time work. His boss, Agent Jack Crawford (Laurence
Fishburne, CSI, The Matrix), knows this, but decides to risk Will’s
sanity in order to make use of his brilliance.
Does this make Jack a monster? In a
series about bad people, one has to wonder if the good guys also deserve
some of the blame. After all, if Jack never puts Will in the field,
Will won’t suffer as he does. Jack is playing a dangerous game.
Jack first approaches Dr. Alana Bloom
(Caroline Dhavernas, Off the Map, Wonderfalls) to be Will’s partner and
handler, but after she refuses, likely of the same opinion I just
expressed in the previous paragraph, he approaches Alana’s mentor, the
genius profiler Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen, Unit 1, Casino
Royale). Lecter is an odd duck, but seems to have it much more together
than Will, and so is an appropriate balance. Seems being the operative
word.
We all know who Hannibal really is, and
while no one in authority yet suspects the good doctor of any wrong
doing, Hannibal tempts fate right out of the gate by secretly impeding
the investigation, giving their query warning that they are coming. It
may be professional courtesy between serial killers, but it certainly
doesn’t make Hannibal good at his new job.
Dancy is amazing. He plays the part with
such nuance and detail! Granted, this is a role any actor would kill
(pun intended) to play, with such a rich, vibrant patchwork of elements.
It’s the type of part the Emmys were created for, and Dancy masterfully
unfurls the layers of the damaged psyche. He will surely be on the
short list come award season.
Mikkelsen, on the other hand, plays his
cards very close to his vest, so we’re slow to get the full picture of
who he is. If one can put what one already knows about the character
from other sources out of their mind, it’s easy to agree with Will when
he says Hannibal is not interesting. But Hannibal immediately promises
that he will be, and by the end of the first episode, we get the early
hints that he is right. Plus, one does have to wonder what kind of
sausage Hannibal serves Will for breakfast…
Obviously, HANNIBAL will have elements
of a standard crime drama, but the focus is much more character-driven
than other shows. Like Dexter or Bates Motel, HANNIBAL promises to get
inside the mind of what makes a psychopath, and explore paths both taken
and avoided. Will and Hannibal are two sides of the same coin, and
watching them interact and face off will be quite entertaining.
I do wonder how long HANNIBAL can
realistically stretch out the two of them working together, though.
Right off the bat, Hannibal is mucking things up for Will. Will is not
stupid, and the two have plenty of FBI agents keeping tabs on them.
Hannibal may be highly intelligent, but sooner or later he’s bound to
get caught. If he doesn’t, it’s going to start making the other
characters look like dolts, incapable of doing the jobs they’re
supposedly great at, especially where Will is concerned.
Making Hannibal fully go to the other
side would be the right move for the series to make eventually, not
necessarily at the end of the run, even as it would completely change
the show. Because of this, I doubt NBC will rush into anything. In the
short-term, that means we are going to have to deal with plot holes and
leaps of logic to make it work.
I really like the execution of HANNIBAL.
It’s production looks fantastic, and the cast is terrific. I just worry
that the scenario is not quite as well thought out as it needs to be.
The show walks a very fine line of believability, and if it’s not
careful, it will slip off too often.
At least it can’t be accused of being a
copycat. Despite being one of only several serial killer dramas out
right now, HANNIBAL does its own thing, and doesn’t feel like any of the
others. That is a credit to its creator.
The rest of the cast includes Lara Jean
Chorostecki (Camelot) as a blogger who will be on Hannibal’s scent, and
Aaron Abrams (The LA. Complex, Rookie Blue), Hettienne Park (Young
Adult), and Scott Thompson (The Kids in the Hall) as FBI agents. None of
them gets any development to speak of in ” Apetrif,” though hopefully
they will as the series goes on.
Overall, HANNIBAL is not a bad effort,
and definitely worth checking out. There are just some things that need
fixing if its going to be a long-running drama with the big fan base it
seeks.
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