Hannibal

Slade establishes an excellent atmosphere which I hope won’t disappear in future episodes. I enjoy the blood splattering into faces and onto walls and the psychological shootouts between our two heroes. The actors are excellent, but of course, Mads rules; but even Hugh Dancy is really fine too. Don’t screw it up! (08.04.2013)

An oddity. Everything in this series is so... unnatural. You seem to get the impression that everyone else around you, including your innocent-looking and loving grandmother, is a potential sadistic murderer who kills using the most bizarre and bestial techniques. If you thought that growing mushrooms on the half-dead bodies of the victims, depicted in the first season, was a bit "over the top", in the second one they go even further, until I'm afraid of what they will come up with next in the coming seasons (here even my imagination is not enough, unlike the showrunners’). Everyone in this series is so awfully serious that it would make you – in the words of Amadeus – shit a marble, they declaim so slowly and the plot twists pile up as if from the realm of the creepiest sc-fi that it gradually kills you and throws you into lethargy. The only thing that keeps it afloat is the seductively bleak cinematography and the charisma of Dancy and Mikkelsen. After completing two seasons, I'll gladly pass on the rest of this calculated and thoughtfully played-for-effect bizarre fodder. And I don't blame the originally cast David Bowie for not getting caught up in this. (01.06.2014)

An immersive, bleak atmosphere, impressive disturbing images, delightfully uncompromising and obscure main storyline, elaborate ambiguous characters who get under your skin (Hannibal, Abigail, Will, Du Maurier, Crawford) and... And also the completely incomprehensible concept of “making each episode a standalone case". Which is an approach that fits here about as well as the current Slavia soccer team in the Champions League - not even in your wildest dreams. This strikes the eyes (ears, nose, head, and feet) all the more so because each one of these episodic cases is like an advertisement for a boring, routine, thriller-like, mediocrity illustrated. Some of them have potential, but because the creators devote at least half their time to the main story in each episode, they do not have the necessary space to develop. The only thing this approach succeeds in doing is to cut the main storyline into pieces, robbing it of any drive it ever had. If one of the big cable companies had taken over from the outset, it could have done without the annoying episodic "CSI elements" (as shown by the pilot and the finale), and Hannibal could have been a purebred dog that barks and bites properly. Unfortunately, under NBC's administration, a half-baked cat-dog has crawled out, that doesn't bark, bite, meow, or even purr. (30.09.2013)

The script profiles the characters and situations seriously as if they all have cancer, turning an established brand into a product that delivers the most ridiculous result by a mile in terms of the ambition/performance ratio; Mikkelsen is a casting blunder, acting brilliantly but completely negating the point of the character with his Nordic coolness. (10.11.2014)

I've seen two episodes, but actually one was enough for me to realize that I won't get into this TV series. It's diligently cool and it uses all possible popular and impactful tools to capture the viewer's attention, with an interesting environment, and mentally disturbed or exceptional character types, but somehow I'm missing the point with this style and I see it as mere purposefulness. If I'm being honest, the only thing that really works in the series is Mads Mikkelsen and his doctor Hannibal Lecter. However, he doesn't play a dominant role and, on the contrary, the main protagonist of the series is, in my opinion, a complete mistake and his interactions with the doctor don't work. If I were to compare Anthony Hopkins and Mads Mikkelsen, it would be very difficult for me to decide whom to highlight (although the classic would probably have the advantage in the end), but everything else in comparison to the legendary The Silence of the Lambs falls short in my opinion. Overall impression: 35%. (04.07.2014)