It’s nearly impossible to list every aspect of NBC's Hannibal that made it stand out. Its unique adaption of the infamous Silence of the Lambs serial cannibal's life before capture makes the well-known story completely fresh. The cinematography is unfailingly gorgeous. The acting was consistently raw and electric. The pitch-black comedy of it all plays enthusiastically against existential questions of trauma and morality and love born from the understanding of another person, however scary that understanding is. It had the makings of, if not a perfect show, one that would continue for at least a few more years than it did.
It's been nearly three years since NBC's Hannibal was cancelled, though. And yet, fans and creators alike seem certain that it is coming back and coming back soon. Talks of a revival have been held, the showrunner, Bryan Fuller, has been tweeting and interviewing about the possibility of a season four more and more, and several of the show's creators have been slowly but surely moving Hannibal to the top of their Twitter bios' priority list. No confirmation yet, but, in all likelihood, Hannibal will return in some shape or form soon.
So, if there was ever a good time to binge the show's 39 episodes, this is it.
If you need further convincing, though, here is a short list of reasons why you should give Hannibal a shot:
1. It's one of few near-perfect novel adaptions
Silence of the Lambs has become a horror classic since its release in 1991, but before it made it to the big screen, SotL was actually the second book in a trilogy by Thomas Harris. The first of that trilogy, Red Dragon, is where NBC's Hannibal takes its plot from.
Bryan Fuller is not one to just take what's on the page at face-value, though. His talent for digging into the text and extracting and exploding details for the screen is well-documented in his recent adaption of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, in which a fingernail of the book takes up an entire season of plot. Adaptations of novels too often simplify the work they're based on to fit it all onscreen, but Fuller excels at expanding novels for his shows, and that was exactly what Hannibal required.
The entirety of Hannibalwas an exploded detail from the novel, just a few lines on the case that made Will realize that the man he solved it with was a killer, and Fuller uses those to dig deeper into these characters than any previous adaption does. He takes characters and moments that make up a simple montage of newspaper clippings or a brief cameo in the films and gifts them with impossibly intricate, emotional story arcs. Somehow, when Fuller chooses to change what should have been a straightforward blueprint in the novel, it is always for the better. He has mastered bringing novels to life.
2. It gets inside your head
While Hannibal's pilot episode is still better than most, it features just enough procedural tropes to convince you that you're watching a procedural drama. A murderer is caught. A slightly rude, sad man solves the crime. A girl is saved in the nick of time.
The moment the show establishes that as its foundation, though, it starts to pick at it. The monsters of the week tend to linger, characters that would remain one-offs stick around, and, as the show really starts to explore the limits of Will's mental stability, the seams of the carefully knit facade it created in its first few episodes really start to unravel.
And that attentiveness to not only what aspects of the novel appeared on screen, but how they would stay with the show's audience, is a major reason Hannibal succeeded. It did everything in its power to get into its characters’ and audience’s heads so it could make viewers really feel Will get pulled into Hannibal's orbit. The way the show sinks into Fuller's dream-like aesthetic so that its odd and unsettling contortions of reality seep from Will's perspective and into the regular imagery of the show makes its audience feel their grip on reality slip with Will’s. It's a spellbinding progression.
This show knew better than any other how to establish rules just so they could be broken and how to use its audience's expectations to make them engage with the world and characters it created. It was an interactive surreal art-piece: Hannibal Lecter's Guide to Challenging Your Audience's Sense of Reality Until They Reach The Point Where They Just Have to Trust You.
3. The characters are so lovingly crafted
Since that first episode does read as a standard FBI procedural, Hannibal had to rely on something other than its plot to carry it into the second episode. Obviously, the audience's knowledge of Hannibal Lecter is a big draw-in, but the moment I've most often seen cited by many fans as the moment that hooked them is the two minutes of the pilot where the show stops all the action to take a glimpse into the character of Will Graham.
I won't go into detail (you'll know this moment when you see it), but this brief scene was one of many character moments to come that were so full of care and love on the writers' parts that it's difficult not to feel that same love for every character, especially Will. They really knew their characters, and wanted their audience to know them just as well. Of course, the show's plot is fun, but it was the attention to the people who populated it that really made this show special.
4. It defies genre
Like I said, Hannibal was once a procedural. To most fans who made it to the end of season three, that fact is amost baffling. Not just because the show took on a slightly different format or changed the focus, but because where we end is 100% not where we would have expected when we started, both plot-wise and genre-wise. In the span of 39 episodes, this show turns from an FBI monster-of-the-week to a cat-and-mouse drama to an aesthetic foreign art film.
It never stop evolving and redefining both itself and the rules of the genres it finds brief residence in. It's still the same show at its heart, but the surrounding atmosphere and world is constantly shifting with the changes in its characters' allegiances and mental states. Even the characters become lost in their separate genres, as Jack Crawford attempts to live out a film noir while Will finds the cracks in his procedural and Hannibal indulges in the art piece he imagines his life to be. It is nearly impossible to know what landscape this show is headed into next, and that is at least half of the fun of watching it break every rule it is offered.
5. It dodges bad horror tropes expertly
I remember early on in the show's life, an interviewer asked Bryan Fuller what sort of violence he drew the line at when depicting violence onscreen, and he said that he would never portray sexual violence. And he kept that promise, even throughout the Red Dragon arc, where a major part of the arc's villain's MO in the novel was just that.
The show was always careful to keep its network of female and queer characters alive and well, only truly slipping up once as far as I can remember (and, to be honest, I will never forgive them for it, but once is far fewer than most other shows are boasting, especially horror shows). It even takes existing straight, male characters from the books and plays with their gender and sexuality so that characters who normally wouldn't even make it through a TV show alive can thrive.
This was a show that was fully aware of the tropes that come with horror, including the ones the series it was based on played into, and did its best to not only avoid them, but to turn them on their heads.
6. The sense of humor is gold
You may not believe it if you haven't seen it, but Hannibal was enormous fun. The nights I spent watching season two with friends were always filled with laughter and near-giddy enjoyment. I know this show is advertised as a drama, and it is a drama for the most part, but it is also filled with campy horror and pitch black comedy. The combination of tense circumstance, other-worldly aesthetics, and delirious humor in this show leaves you feeling like you've walked out of a fever dream at the end of each episode in the best way possible.
7. It's somehow both over-the-top and subtle at the same time
To call Hannibal subtle, full stop, would be a complete falsehood. This show was chock-full of dramatically spoken jargon and extravagantly designed food and corpses, all loud, beautiful, and in your face. In the middle of all that, though, were Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen, two incredibly subtle actors. Mads, especially, is hailed for his microexpressions. Hannibal and Will's relationship is the heart of this show, and watching these two actors interact and build such a unique chemistry through facial cues and body language among the chaos of the rest of the show made that relationship stand out even more. Everything about them felt intimate from the get-go, because their relationship and allegiances were crafted the slightest of mouth quirks or side-eyes. Within the raucous nature of Hannibal, subtlety produced energy and tension came from everything that wasn't said, making these two the perfect center.
8. The season two finale is WILD
Every Hannibal finale is wild, but the season two finale is, no exaggeration, one of the best things I've ever seen on television. Obviously, I'm not going to say too much about it so that I don't spoil it. I just need you to know. It is wild.
9. It's coming back, and it's coming back soon
We know this is a real possibility. So why not start now?
Watch the trailer for the first season of Hannibal here:
