Horror 102: Television Horror

NBC pulled a genius move in 2013 by hiring Bryan Fuller to run an adaptation of Thomas Harris’ characters from his novel Red Dragon.  The show, called Hannibal, ran from April 2013 to August 2015.  Mads Mikkelsen was tapped to play the character of Hannibal Lecter, and bay-bee...whew chile!  There was a time when Anthony Hopkins was the definitive Lecter, but Mads has since supplanted Sir Anthony.  He plays Hannibal as the Devil and does things just to see what happens.  The co-star of this excellent show is the adorable Hugh Dancy as Will Graham, known to us fans of the book as the one who caught Hannibal Lecter.  The cast also includes Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford and he killed that role.

The show is darkly beautiful with gorgeous death tableaux.  Hannibal Lecter is a man of theatrics, from the delicious meals he prepares to the people he murders in such creative and vicious ways.  The show adopted a Monster of the Week format, with Hannibal’s crimes and eventual capture forming the wraparound story.  We had three good years of a most excellent show, but NBC (imho) made some bad scheduling decisions and the show’s ratings declined to the point that it was canceled in 2015.

I’m so grateful that Netflix has this show, and it is also available on Amazon Prime...there to watch again and again, because it is the kind of show that the more you watch it, the more you see.  If you have not watched Hannibal, then you need to skedaddle over to NF or Amazon and get your life.