This television season may go down as the year of the serial killer. Fox’s “The Following” is one of the few new shows this season that can be called a hit. And BBC America has renewed “Ripper street,” its Jack the Ripper crime drama. A&E has “Bates Motel,” the story of the “Psycho” killer’s formative years. This week, NBC will add its own interpretation to the mix with “Hannibal,” which takes an intimate look at the famous “psychiatrist cannibal” before the FBI locked him up.
Both shows present some pretty grisly murder scenes—from a naked and tattooed woman putting out her own eye with an icepick on “The Following,” to live but comatose people being turned into gardens in “Hannibal” — but both series explore the intense relationship between criminal and investigator.
in “The Following,” that relationship is clearly adversarial, with Joe Carroll (the charming James Purefoy) matching wits with FBI agent Ryan hardy (Kevin Bacon). in “Hannibal,” viewers know the path the relationship between Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) and Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) ultimately will take — in fact, they know it far better than these characters do — but for now, Hannibal is a cipher to Will.
All Will knows about Hannibal is that he’s man who, like Will, understands the minds of some of the country’s most lethal psychopaths. That’s helpful to Will, who works as a special consultant to the FBI, tracking and catching these people. Meanwhile, Hannibal holds all the cards, because he’s the only one who knows that he’s playing a deadly game of his own.
The depiction of the growing bond between Will and Hannibal makes the show both psychological thriller and murder mystery.
“It will become clearer to the audience what Hannibal is doing, while the characters in the show remain in the dark,” says executive producer Bryan Fuller. “We don’t want to overuse that opportunity though. It’s fun to suggest to the audience the kind of violence that Hannibal is playing out without seeing him actually do it. We’re lulling the audience into a false sense of security about who this guy is.”
Initially, Hannibal wants to make friends with Will, because he sees a similarity between them. Will is so isolated that Hannibal’s offer of friendship is welcome.
“I think there’s a kinship between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham,” says Fuller. “This first season is all about the friendship, the ‘bromance,’ so to speak,” says Fuller. “The second season is about the betrayal and the break up. it’s a very conscious meting out of the chapters of that relationship.”
in “Hannibal,”Will is a reclusive professor cursed with the gift of empathy — he not only sees into the minds of serial killers, he lives out their acts. Fuller makes the most of scenes that starkly show the viewer what Will sees in his head.
“That potential in Will is one of the things that makes him so scared and so reclusive,” says Dancy, 37, who recently guest starred in showtime’s “The Big C” and starred in Broadway in “Venus in Fur.”Dancy, who is married to Claire Danes, says, “it’s one of the things that Hannibal sees in him immediately. Hannibal is looking closely at that potential in Will. There’s a tug of war between the two of them over Will’s soul, without Will knowing that the game is rigged.
“The heart of this show are the scenes of Will sitting in Hannibal’s office in these bizarre ‘therapy’ sessions,” continues Dancy.
“The big difference between Hannibal and Will is that although they both have a lot of empathy, Will doesn’t know what to do with it. Hannibal is a master of controlling his empathy. he can be sad when he wants to, happy when he wants to. he’s the opposite of
Will,” says Mikkelsen, 47, a Danish actor best known to American audiences as the poker player who shed blood tears in the first Daniel Craig-era Bond film, “Casino Royale.”Mikkelsen was on the short list to play Hannibal from the very start, Fuller says.
“I wanted to cast an actor who would bring distinction to the role and shatter expectations,” says Fuller, acknowledging that the character of Hannibal Lecter was immortalized by Anthony Hopkins in the Oscar-winning “Silence of the Lambs.” But Mikkelsen manages to bring to life a balanced version of Hannibal — a person who’s equal parts appealing and creepy.
“Hannibal sees himself as a genius,” says Mikkelsen. “he’s not doing these murders for banal reasons like other killers — he wasn’t abused as a child or anything. He’s doing it because he sees the beauty in it. he’s as close to the devil as he can come because he sees the beauty that exists on the cusp of life and death. He’s probably the worst person i’ve ever heard of.”