Hannibal (2013-2015)

Already seen it for the third time and it looks like a train. Beautifully portrayed, beautifully decorated, moreover atmospheric in sound and strongly acted by Dancy and Fishburne in particular. The pace in terms of murders is way too high in this first season, so we don't get the same depth in the sick minds of the perpetrators as in Red Dragon or Silence of the Lambs. But the emphasis is more on Will Graham (Dancy's shining role) and Hannibal's manipulations in the background, which gradually become clearer. He has everything to look for in this series, but his meaning seems much smaller in the beginning than it turns out later. Abigail Hobb is also a strong part, but unfortunately tabloid reporter Freddie Lounds (here a very nice appearance) is not played with refinement.

Although Mikkelsen is creditable as the inscrutable wolf in sheep's clothing Hannibal, you do miss the tension that his dialogues with Clarice Starling and Will Graham had in the films, partly due to the much more advanced game of Hopkins. It is mainly Will who keeps the series going.

Psychology plays a very large role in the series, despite the exploitation (you get to see the most bizarre crime scenes) and there is also a remarkable amount of culinary pornography to enjoy. The dialogues are intelligently written. For some it will just as well be too bloody and especially too far-fetched given the bizarre scenes sometimes. Realism certainly doesn't seem like the main goal: there are relatively few serial killers, and profilers like Will don't actually exist. Doesn't take away from the fact that it is fascinating to watch, a guilty pleasure with a level. Many times more than the sleep-inducing Mindhunters.

Translated from Dutch · View original

Gothic serial killer soap, in which Mads Mikkelsen plays a very nice Dr. Hannibal Lecter down. They go here more for the camp from 'Hannibal' (2001) and 'Hannibal Rising' (2007) than for the more serious work like 'Silence of the Lambs' (1991) or 'Red Dragon' (2002). This Hannibal is always and everywhere and knows how to put everyone in front of his cart, with the result that he shows up in the most unbelievable situations. Also, his fellow killers, whose crimes are often solved in a single episode, find their way into the lives of the main characters almost every episode, while the FBI unit in question seems to have little to do with healthy working relationships or a delicate handling confidential information. It's also a shame that this Hannibal keeps coming to the fore in the storylines, while the iconic figure in the better films worked just as well as that devilish prompter in the shadows: impotent and powerless, but still shrewd enough to do most of the work. out of his position with his mind games. It's still a nice nonsense series (among other things due to an excess of gore in the bizarre murder scenarios), but this iconic cuddle cannibal deserves better.

Translated from Dutch · View original

"Will" or "Jack" would have been a less appealing but more appropriate title. Because this series isn't about Hannibal.

After a great, but unchronological, series of Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal and Red Dragon, this series presents us with a weak police soap in which an unstable sissy is pushed by his incompetent supervisor to do every murder that happens in the is committed in his mind's eye to replay crime scene evidence that could have been read by any forensic investigator. These cases are "solved" in half an hour in the most ridiculous ways. Because these homicide cases get too much of a wimp from the get-go, he'd rather just go back to his college teacher job, only to be forced by the empathetic cliché of every standard FBI/police superior ever, Jack Crawford, to to continue with his work as a 'profiler', which means that he has to go into therapy or a conversation with a Dr Lecter who pops up all the time in every episode and all the time analyzing his interlocutors unsolicited but really nothing in this series to look for.

Translated from Dutch · View original