An Unsatisfying Meal

Last night brought the premiere of a new TV show, Hannibal. It got quite a few high marks among the critics, but what really drew me to take a look was the creator of the series, Bryan Fuller. He's the man behind Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies, all wonderful and clever shows. Hannibal, of course, is going to have a much darker tone than any of those series, but if anything I personally would see that as a potentially intriguing plus.

But while the debut wasn't that bad, I didn't find it to be the revelation many of the critics seemed to think it was. For starters, the casting is a bit uneven. Hugh Dancy is strong in the lead role as Will Graham, the highly empathic crime fighter. I'm also intrigued to see Caroline Dhavernas, who starred in Wonderfalls, taking on a character of a wholly different nature. However, there was also a very hammy performance by Laurence Fishburne as an FBI supervisor. (He seems to have been cast purely as a reaction to his two season appearance on CSI; people said he was too dark and broody for that show, so surely he'll fit on a show that's dark by nature, right?! Meh, not so much.)

But the most challenging casting is the role of Hannibal Lecter. How do you follow Anthony Hopkins in the role that won him an Oscar? You try to erase that image from the minds of the viewers, apparently. Mads Mikkelsen plays Lecter, and there's not a thing about him that is familiar. He has a rather dense accent that's hard to penetrate at times. He has a creepy hair style, and is often dressed out of a 1970s wardrobe. His demeanor is peculiar. Sure, he's nothing like Anthony Hopkins... but he's so strange that his very presence undermines the premise that the lead character of Will Graham is a super-gifted analyst who can size up anybody in a moment.

Which leads to another problem the series faces. We the audience all know that Hannibal Lecter is a cannibalistic killer, so there's little point in hiding that revelation from the audience. So far, so good -- the series makes no attempt to do so. But every moment that he isn't caught, every moment that we haven't moved on from Lecter to what follows, is requiring an impossible suspension of disbelief. Every other character on the show is made to look dumb at the expense of making Lecter look smart. It's a losing proposition, and if the show intends to make a season arc out of catching Lecter? Well, it'll lose me long before that.

I'm considering giving the show one more episode to show me something engaging, but overall, I found the premiere to be quite a disappointment. It's like NBC went out shopping for the goriest thing they could get on their airwaves, trying to get themselves a Walking Dead or The Killing. But instead, they should have shopped for a descent into the mind of evil -- a Breaking Bad.