Hannibal

In spite of my best efforts, I’ve become addicted to Hannibal. Admittedly fairly late in the day, with the show now having completed its second season.

Although similar in conception, it is far superior to Dexter (a show which manages the supreme feat of being both morally bankrupt and boring to watch). Furthermore it is superior to much of its source material: Lecter doesn’t go sleep in a coffin, when he isn’t deploying his demonic superpowers like he does in Hannibal. And it isn’t a big pile of shit like Hannibal Rising.

What makes the show compelling is, inevitably, the realisation of its central villain, portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen who appears to have been specially bred by scientists to answer the question, What would a jackfish look like if it was a little bit sexy? He looks divine, supremely peacocking it in floral ties and prince-of-wales check, three-piece suits. We hardly ever see Hannibal finish a meal. (Although given how extravagantly wasteful he is in the kitchen, I wouldn’t be surprised if he threw it away after the first mouthful.)The show’s most interesting decision is not to pair him off with an immediately likeable adversary: Will Graham (much more like his Manhunter form than his sanitised 2002 version) struggles with his own psyche and becomes increasingly morally compromised.

Hannibal is delectable: costume, set, photography and (inevitably) food are mouthwatering. Almost every detail in this show seems to have been chosen from Lecter’s baroque standpoint. (I say “almost” - there are some egregious misfires, such as Hannibal’s bedroom and some other cock-swinging ornaments.)

Where the show’s aesthetic sensibility really gleams is in its corpses. It was, to a large extent, Harris’s fiction which inaugurated the premise that every self-respecting, serial-killing psychopath needed an organising conceit and that every spree was a concept album. The MOs are swatted like mayflies. (Bodies are transfigured into totem poles, mushroom gardens and a cello. That’s right. A cello.) All the murders seem to have been imagined by Hannibal. It reaches its most meta moment with a collage of human bodies creating a giant eye, staring back at God (and the viewer, and Hannibal). It is this level of sophistication that distinguishes it from its horror-thriller comrades.

It’s by no means flawless. The women are poorly written. Apparently, like serial killers, they can only have one operative principle. This show fails the Bechdel test, like, bigtime. But an even bigger problem is how short the episodes are. Basically there is no third act. A macabre corpse is discovered (often artfully lit) and then, before we know it, the killer is dealt with. It’s like Columbo without the “Just one more thing...” (and a heap more gore). The show would have been much better off stringing out its secondary killers over a season rather than attempting a monster of the week. Admittedly by the end of the second season the monster of the week has become a big (well middle-sized) bad in the form of Mason Verger. But by that point he, unfortunately, gets in the way of the much more interesting kiss-chase between Will and Hannibal. (The homosocial/homoeroticism of which reaches staggeringly gay heights with the Achilles-Patroclus insinuation and a supremely misjudged doubled sex scene.)

It just gets better every episode. And the conclusion to the second season is the sort of thing that deserves assistants operating handheld aromatisers as you consume it.

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