TV TUESDAY: HANNIBAL

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This new NBC show brings crime drama to a whole new level. Not only do we have an unconventional, socially inapt FBI criminal profiler and teacher at the FBI academy Will Graham (Hugh Dancy). We have the roots of Dr. Hannibal Lecter played by Mads Mikkelsen, the psychiatrist who is rarely expressive yet still manages to have an engaging relationships with his patients. However, the Doctor is not introduced until nearly the last half of the pilot. In this critique I don’t want to give away spoilers but I really want people to understand the relationships of the two main characters and the overall cinematographic picture of the show from my review. The content of the crime drama is fascinating and doesn’t disappoint. However, I need to touch on the opening on this show and how it’s effects and perspective of a crime scene will have you hooked onto Will Graham and this series in a heartbeat.

We spend the first minutes of the show looking at a crime scene like an police officer, the slanted angle of a dead women below us, blood splatter on the walls and Will Graham just standing in the middle of all the police and chaos with a stoic, eerily calm look on his face. We then are stripped of all sound and with a yellow laser effect we have the whole room wiped clean, police, victims, etc. In a slow motion effect to show the reversal of time Will walks backwards out of the room until he is standing in front of the house in the past, moments before the murders take place. When he is finished backing up he charges into the house and reenacts the murders as he has now jumped into the role of the murderer. The craziest thing is we see through his eyes how this murderer did his deed but while he is ‘killing’ the victim is set into slow motion as Will, in normal speed talks about how the person died using the first person. Ex: ‘I shoot the man in the head, causing him to die instantly, this is my design.’ We know he isn’t the killer but we gather the killer’s perspective through the criminal profiler.

After watching that scene I was instantly hooked on the show because I truly liked how Will took on the killer’s perspective to look for clues on how possibly the killer could have fudged up the crime scene. What is special about Will is that he knows he’s not the technical term for ‘normal’ and even says he’s more on the “Asperger’s (a form of Autism), narcissistic and sociopath kind of sociable. However he is amazing at his job because he can empathize with serial killers, which scares him and thrills him at the same time. Now my critique over his character, I think Will Graham is an amazing new character that we haven’t really explored in prime time. We saw this with MONK on USA network, a neurotic former police officer and Will is a socially awkward former police officer as well. Yet Will is compassionate, he rescues dogs and that’s his form of ‘family’. So girls can easily identify him as the Cute and Complicated guy they can follow.

Each week there is a serial killer that is the main focus of the show, the first week is about girls that go missing and are impaled by antlers, as if to bleed them out. Yet one special victim is put back into her bed after her death, Will says the killer was being sympathetic because she had liver cancer and the meat was bad. We cut to a man delicately cutting a sliver of meat and bringing it to his mouth, and we are starring at the darken face of the notorious Dr. Hannibal Lecter. From then on we escape the crime scene for a few more minutes and divulge into Dr. Lecter’s life. We see a blurred image of a man reaching out his hand and pleading, we think it’s a victim. But when we pull out we see the wide shot of the profile of Dr. Lecter handing a tissue to a patient.

The art designer knew what they were doing when they made Dr. Lecter’s office bleak and more like a study/private library then a psychiatric office. It’s dark walls and covered windows makes you feel you are suffering even if you aren’t a patient. Dr. Lecter is usually shown in partial shadow with his slicked back perfect hair and gray toned suits that essentially ‘tone down’ are already cool and calm demeanor. Graham on the other hand has untamed curly hair and has the lighter tones of the wardrobe, showing his youth as well as his personality.  However as you watch the relationship between Graham and Dr. Lecter grow (it’s already only as of tomorrow, three episodes in the series) and they have already experienced running in on a killer, death, a breakfast meal together and psychiatric sessions.

Their relationship is something that will really steals the show because as of now we don’t know that Dr. Lecter is another serial killer that Graham and the FBI is chasing down but watching two men have that interest in serial killers and how they are criminally profiled is enticing to watch, especially from the audience’s perspective of ‘I know something you don’t know’.