NBC's Hannibal strikes a comfortable tone. (With a warning to NBC on how NOT to screw it up.)

Serial Killers are en vogue right now, at least on TV.  A&E has “Bates Motel” which, if I were in charge of branding for A&E, I would’ve never let that get through.  It makes it seem as though the show is about the day-to-day operations of running a small, roadside motor hotel, in between the brutal murders of an embezzler, a police detective, and a third attempted murder.  Fox has “The Following,” with Kevin Bacon, which has ridden out many of the early hiccups and last-minute character alterations (I guess he’s… not an alcoholic anymore?) to have a fun, coherent, ever-changing show about a serial killer cult.  Showtime’s Dexter is wrapping up after this upcoming eighth and final season.  There are, of course, behavior science shows like SVU and Criminal Minds, but the other, more heralded and critically acclaimed hit is NBC’s Hannibal, a revival of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter character, including Jack Crawford as the director of the Behavioral Sciences unit at the FBI. There is a reason for why Hannibal has received its much deserved praise. The acting and plots have been fantastic, and the theme for the show, with a potentially insane criminal behavior forensic psychologist assisting the FBI, all add to the appeal. But, it is the tone in which the show is portrayed that truly sets it apart from the rest of the gory pack.

(**Mild spoilers are peppered throughout**)

NBC had an uphill slog to remake the Hannibal character.  It needed to pay homage to the original (well, not REALLY the original, but the most memorable) portrayal of Dr. Lecter: the Dr. Lecter created by Sir Anthony Hopkins, who originally envisioned the role in the stirring and unsettlingly brilliant film from director Jonathan Demme, The Silence of the Lambs.  He reprised the role twice – in Hannibal and Red Dragon, though ceded it to a younger actor to portray a youthful Dr. Lecter in Hannibal Rising.  NBC also needed to strike the character out on its own – the series takes the foundation created by Demme and his successors, and envision it in a manner that would be suitable for 18-22 forty five minute long episodes each year.  I believe they have succeeded, and the reason is the tone of the series.

First, the series introduces Will Graham, an insomniac who has a natural ability to understand violent crimes and criminals. As the series begins, we are introduced to the young behavioral psychologist through the reconstruction of a crime scene through his eyes.  The viewer is initially convinced that Graham committed the crime, but we later come to learn* that he was merely reconstructing the heinous and brutal murders in his mind. Graham’s character is spastic and jumpy.  He is also unsure of himself, and craven in the face of overbearing authority. It’s as though he recognizes in himself the capability to murder, and is afraid of his own natural tendency.

*-Important note – I do not mean that we are told he reconstructs the murders.  I mean that we come to learn. The show does not hold our hand on this. Instead, we have to realize this at the midway point of the episode, as they reconstruct a second, similar murder.

Dr. Lecter is introduced as a character serving as a FBI Behavioral Pathologist in a similar vein to Will Graham.  As we later come to find out, Dr. Lecter is extremely similar to his film counterpart, in his erudite way of carrying himself, his obsession with the finest in culinary cuisine, and the tone in which he carries himself. When we are first introduced to Sir Anthony Hopkins’ Dr. Hannibal Lecter, locked away in the bowels of a federal penitentiary, Dr. Lecter is standing in his cell, awaiting Jodie Foster’s arrival.  He is courteous, fastidiously adorned in all white, and eager to trade verbal jabs with his satiny smooth cadence and vocal inflection.  Everything about Dr. Lecter is the antithesis of Jodie Foster’s agent-in-training; she speaks with a West Virginia drawl, seems unsure and submissive to his confidence, and makes, in his estimation, a ham-handed transition in her attempt to get him to fill out her questionnaire.

Hopkins portrays Lecter as a man who knows the answer before you’ve asked the question; a man who doesn’t play the game unless he’s in control of the board.  NBC’s Hannibal, portrayed by Mads Mikkelson, is much the same, though he speaks with a slower, more deliberate cadence.  His voice, his manner of being, is best summed up by one word: knowing.  He is confident, unfazed, and calming.  The soothing baritone of his accented, near-monotone delivery lulls the viewer, even when he is discussing the inner workings of the psychopathic mind. The scene that best exemplifies the Hannibal Lecter character is from the pilot episode “Aperitif.” As Will Graham attempts to save the life of Abigail Hobbs, the daughter of a serial killer who slit her throat as an attempt to escape the grasp of the FBI, his hands shake and fumble, and blood, spurting from the young girl’s severed carotid artery, sprays on his face and glasses because he cannot hold his hands steady on her neck, Dr. Lecter, along to apprehend Abigail’s psychotic father, leans down and calmly clamps his hands around Abigail’s neck to cover her wound and save her life.

Anthony Heald, who portrayed Dr. Frank Chilton, the warden of the asylum where Dr. Lecter was being held, showed Jodie Foster the picture of a nurse who leaned across Lecter’s face during a routine procedure.  He apparently bit into her face with such ferocity that the picture was extremely ghastly.  Chilton’s comment was “his pulse never went above 85. Even when he ate her tongue.”  Hopkins, when murdering the guards in Tennessee to plan his face-wearing escape looked positively benign as he struck murderous blows with their batons.  Lecter does not act surprised.  Lecter knows, and has extrapolated everything in advance.  He doesn’t believe himself to be a psychopath, nor does he believe his behavior to be abhorrent.  He believes his guards and doctors to be captors, and his existence to be a higher order of humanity.

This sense of calm, this tone that embodies Hopkins’ Lecter, as well as Mikkelson’s Lecter, is the reason why Hannibal is such a success, and so enjoyable.  We do not have a specific locus of narration, but we do have a smart group of writers who are uninterested in holding the viewer’s hand along the way.  The show portrays the events, and allows the viewers to decide upon the motives.  Where Dexter’s locus of narration is the main character for the vast majority of the show, NBC portrays Hannibal from afar, cinematic, yet almost documentary style.  We do not know if we are supposed to root for Hannibal, as he isn’t actually the main character.  We root for the wise-cracking Dexter and his foul mouthed sister, because he is the hero of the show.  When the net draws tight around Hannibal, will we be rooting for him to escape?  Or will we be watching as he escapes, still unsure of how the show wants us to feel about the actions that occur on screen?  My bet is on the latter.

Where Fox has created a large, sprawling cast of small-arc characters for “The Following,” they have created an environment wherein only two characters are actually sacrosanct to the series – Kevin Bacon’s Ryan Hardy, and James Purefoy’s Joe Carroll.  All others can be dispatched at a moment’s notice.  In fact, some characters are introduced for a single episode, seem to be a major force, and are dead by the end credits of the very same episode.  This mode keeps us on our toes, guessing who will survive from one episode to the next.  It actually feels a great deal like 24’s first few seasons, where anyone could die, and we really didn’t know what to expect, other than Kiefer Sutherland screaming about who someone works for.  This makes for great popcorn viewing, but a feeling that the show does not have any rooted sense of plot, other than the interplay between hero and villain – Hardy and Carroll.

Hannibal’s feel is less like the 24-esque non-stop guessing game thrill ride, and far more like The Wire, David Simon’s crime opus set in Baltimore.  The Wire, at least the two seasons I’ve seen, is a show that is uninterested in you knowing everything, holding your hand, or even fully liking all the characters.  Watching The Wire, in its slow moving, plodding, yet still intricately constructed style is like we were a fly on the wall to an investigation.  As an example, in season 1, the notion of investigating a street gang dealing heroin was the first episode in a 12 episode season.  The titular “Wire” isn’t even set up until episode 6.  The first mention of the use of pagers, despite their inclusion from the beginning, is in episode 3 or 4.  They receive the warrant to clone the pagers in episode 5.  The plot twists all feel as though they were fated to happen, even if they are still shocking.  We feel privy to something, as opposed to being immersed in it.  Hannibal has this quality.  What happens is what will happen, not what could happen or what would happen.  In this, the show takes on Dr. Lecter’s quality: knowing.  I feel comfortable with the show and its direction/twists.  I may not necessarily like them, but the show doesn’t need to convince me of their viability or believability.  The show is so comfortable in its tone that it is automatically viable and believable.

The one way, referenced in the title of this post, that NBC can royally screw up this show, is to introduce too soon (or in my mind, at all) the character Clarice Starling.  That interplay exists in another iteration of Hannibal. To bring Agent Starling into the story would make this show something that is then tied to the plot lines of the movie, whether they want to, or not.

My plea to NBC is simple: keep the show in its own timeline, and continue to hold all the pieces.  The tone is perfect.  Avoid references to Census Takers, Fava Beans, and Chianti.  And, for the love of God, keep Agent Starling on the other side of the FBI’s campus, working mail fraud or anti-terrorism or something.