Hanniballs

Another new series is Hannibal, featuring everyone's favourite insane madman, Anthony Hopkins! This series is an 'adaptation' of Red Dragon, with Anthony being played by Mads Nikkelsen and Will Graham by Hugh Dancy. It's been a long time since I read that book, in fact didn't even recall Will as a previously established character. It's by Bryan Fuller, who also did Wonderfalls... and now those two universes have been combined, which I'm sure Tommy Westphall appreciates.

The specific set-up here is that Will is a brilliant profiler who can turn back time... a shtick that involves a lot of CGI and reverse film to accomplish, so he can put himself in the mind of the killer of the week. Possibly going too far, his boss Jack (played by Lawrence Fishburne) brings in another psychologist to help with a case, and then with Will, one Hannibal Lecter.

At least in this case, we don't have the problem of the good guys needing to be excessively incompetent for the bad guys to win. Partly because the bad guys are going to be 'killer of the week' disposable fodder, but mostly because Lecter is on the inside and can either help out or deal with the bad guys himself. Phew about that. On the other hand, we the audience know Lecter is evil, so there will be many cases of moments of 'oh, why can't you realise he's evil, because he just got away with so many things, and we like narrative justice to take place'. (Which won't happen for a while or we'll run out of book/series too quickly.)

Only had two episodes so far, but it is watchable... although I do admit to having problems understanding Nikkelsen's accent. Aside from that, I'm liking it so far, and want to see how it develops.

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