NBC's Hannibal is off to a decent - and very weird - start. The brainchild of Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller, Hannibal takes a stab at giving us a Dr. Lecter prequel, going back to the pre-infamy days before Manhunter and Red Dragon, but featuring the same protagonist from those films, profiler Will Graham, played by Hugh Dancy. Dancy is great and carries a heavy load, an empathic hunter of serial killers who is nearly as disfunctional as they are. Dancy is like a hybrid of James Franco and a young Willem Dafoe and he's a real live-wire here. In some very unusual casting Casino Royale heavy Mads Mikkelson is Dr. Lecter - who's got plenty of odd to go around - but who may very well be miscast. Mads is great at the detached, unblinking creep-out, but so far he's conjured up very little of the charm that we think of when it comes to Lecter. He's also got such a strong accent he's downright unintelligible at times. That is definitely going to have to be addressed for this show to continue - as weird as it may sound, Mads is going to have to warm up and become more likable.
Fascinating casting, with Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford. Unseen in the pilot but soon to appear is Gillian Anderson as Lecter's own psychiatrist, perhaps giving us a little In Treatment dynamic.
It's going to be interesting to see where all this goes. Hannibal is astonishingly violent for network TV. There were several amazingly graphic moments that seem more HBO than NBC, undoubtedly the intent. It feels like Fuller has a plan here and if they can keep the writing sharp and finesse Mads a bit, Hannibal is certainly intriguing enough to come back for a second helping...
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