Last week, NBC’s Hannibal, a reimagining of the
characters from Thomas Harris’s novel Red
Dragon, finished its low-rated and critically adored first season. Despite
its low ratings, NBC has already ordered a second season to premiere in 2014. Hannibal’s renewal came mostly from the
show’s international financing deal that takes much of the financial responsibility
off of NBC’s shoulders. The deal also makes the show’s anemic ratings more
palpable as NBC does not have to pay the full cost of the production and suffer
through its low ratings.
The international financing and
investment in a previously known property represent two hallmarks of the reign
of NBC president Robert Greenblatt. Greenblatt has invested heavily in
previously existing commercial properties or actors. This includes shows such
as Hannibal, the disastrous Do No Harm (a Jekyll and Hyde rip-off),
the upcoming Ironside, Michael J.
Fox’s upcoming comedy, the recently cancelled Matthew Perry vehicle Go On, Mockingbird Lane, and Sean Hayes’
s soon to be cancelled new fall show. NBC’s heyday of critically successful
drama ended when ER and The West Wing left the air and only a
deal with Direct-TV saved the similarly critically adored, but scantly watched Friday Night Lights.
Hannibal earns its critical praise by
deftly exploring the psychological toll of pursuing serial killers and dealing
with the horror of their crimes. The show focuses on three lead characters.
Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), a psychological fragile FBI profiler, who tries to
balance his ability to enter and understand the minds of serial killers with his
own fear of devolving into a killer himself. Jack Crawford, ably played with a simmering
anger by Laurence Fishburne, heads the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit, where
he must balance the need to catch dangerous criminals and Graham’s delicate psyche.
Mads Mikkelsen plays the titular role of Hannibal Lecter. Mikkelsen makes the
role his own by completely moving away from Anthony Hopkins’s scene chewing performance.
Mikkelsen presents Lecter as the portrait of restraint. His impeccable
clothing, accent, affinity for haute cuisine, and keen psychological insight
all mask the monster that lies within. Lecter’s crimes, which have earned him
the nickname of the “Chesapeake Ripper” function as performance. Lecter finds
and creates art in the brutal and horrific destruction of human beings. He
takes similar pleasure in creating gourmet dishes, sometimes made of his
victims. He ingratiates himself to Crawford and the FBI through a series of
weekly discussions with Graham designed to bolster the profiler’s mental
stability. At the same time Lecter learns about and manipulates Graham and the
FBI and its investigation into the “Chesapeake Ripper.”
Hannibal, created and show-run by Bryan
Fuller, separates itself and rises
above the chum of police procedurals by using graphic violence to demonstrate
the psychological trauma that these crimes take on the investigators. Depictions
of violence in the series include; a totem pole made of human bodies,
cannibalism, murder victims used to grow mushrooms, and murder victims with
their skin cut to resemble angels. Throughout the first season, Graham remains
haunted by his justifiable decision to shoot and kill a serial killer. He
dreams of the killer, known as the “Minnesota Shrike,” in vivid
fashion—imagining himself committing the Shrike’s crimes. Graham’s special
ability to understand serial killers revolves around his ability to reimagine
their crimes with himself as the perpetrator. The show takes the viewer along
on the trip in Graham’s damaged psyche by showing Graham committing murders.
This terrifying ability leads Graham to question whether by understanding these
killers will lead him to become one. He manifests this psychological
instability through vivid and visually disturbing dreams, sleepwalking, lapses
in his ability to perceive the passage of time and through his doubts expressed
to Lecter in their informal therapy sessions. The violence of these crimes
haunt Graham and the viewer. Throughout the first season, Graham’s psyche
reality erodes to the point where the Crawford and the FBI come to believe that
Graham has committed a series of murders himself. Unlike Criminal
Minds or The Following, the stark
depictions of violence service the plot by demonstrating how and why Graham
would come to question his own sanity. Without such graphic demonstrations of
brutality, the show would fail in its purpose of portraying the psychological
trauma that upsets Graham’s tenuous hold over his own sanity. Ultimately Hannibal’s relentless depictions of
violence offer a necessary corrective to the casual violence of so many crime
procedurals by graphically exploring the psychological cost of such violence.
